As they rounded the bend, she saw Damon and Caroline, reflected over and over. There were a hundred Damon and Carolines in the flashes of light, all around her, squashed and bulbous, long and thin, bulging oddly.
In the center, two perfectly beautiful people, one human and one vampire, were locked in what was almost an embrace.
Damon had thrown off his cloak and wore jeans and a black button-down. His head was bent back, exposing his long white throat to Caroline. In one hand, he clasped a dagger loosely—Stefan’s dagger, Elena realized, one of his stolen treasures—and Elena could see that he had made a cut along his breastbone for Caroline to feed from. Her face was pressed against Damon’s chest, and, with a shudder of disgust, Elena realized Caroline was swallowing his blood eagerly.
When Caroline raised her head for a moment, her mouth was red and slick with blood. It dripped down her chin and marked her pure white shift. Elena recoiled. The girl’s cat-green eyes seemed dazed, and, as she gazed up at Damon adoringly, Elena was quite sure he’d put Caroline heavily under his Power.
“Stay back, Elena,” Stefan said softly.
At the sound of Stefan’s voice, Damon looked up and threw him a dazzling, brief smile. Turning Caroline gently around so that she faced them, he raised his dagger and laid it against her throat. Caroline hung in his grasp, blinking slowly, not seeming to even see them.
“No,” Stefan said. Elena could feel him tensing himself for one desperate run at Damon. And she knew, as surely as if she had seen it, that if Stefan made a move toward him, Damon would cut Caroline’s throat.
“Stop,” she said, her voice breaking. “Everybody, just stop.” She pushed back her own red hood so that she and Damon could see each other more clearly. His eyes held hers, wide and dark, and his lips tipped up in a mocking smile.
“You need each other, you and Stefan,” she said. “Why are you trying to make another family when your family is here?”
Damon sneered. “Family. Stefan hasn’t been my family since he stuck a sword through my heart.”
Beside her, Elena felt Stefan stiffen. Then he stepped forward. “There is nothing I regret more than that. I killed you. My only brother.” His green eyes were full of tears. “Even if I lived forever, I could never make it up to you.”
Damon stared at him, his handsome face blank.
“Remember how Stefan followed you when you were a child?” Elena asked. “He’d take a beating from your father rather than ever betray your secrets. He worshipped you.” She felt Stefan glance at her curiously, wondering how Elena could know that, but it didn’t matter now. She kept her attention firmly fixed on Damon.
Was his grip on the dagger pressed to Caroline’s throat loosening? Elena wasn’t sure.
“Remember Incognita, the beautiful black mare you won playing cards, when you were just sixteen?” Stefan said hoarsely. “That morning when you brought her home, you let me ride behind you, and we went so fast, her hooves hardly touched the ground. We were invincible then. Happy.”
Surely the taut line of Damon’s mouth was softening, Elena thought. The dagger had slipped a little, resting gently against Caroline’s throat as she sagged, half-conscious in Damon’s arms. But then Damon tensed again.
“Sentimental tales from the nursery,” he scoffed. “Those children have been dead for centuries.” He took a fresh grip on the knife.
“It still matters,” Elena said desperately. “You’re both still here. There are only two people left in the world who remember you when you were alive, Damon. Once Stefan is gone, only Katherine will remember, and she’s the one who changed you. No one else knows anything but the monster. It’s not too late to change that.”
Damon hesitated for a split second. “Again with these promises you can’t keep. If you want the good brother, you already have him.”
Elena shook her head. “No,” she said. “This isn’t about that. I never had either of you, not in this world.”
Damon’s forehead creased in a puzzled frown, but Stefan held out his hands to his brother beseechingly, walking slowly toward him. “I never meant to kill you,” he said, as softly and soothingly as he would have spoken to a wild animal. “I would spend the rest of my days trying to right that wrong, if you would be my brother again.”
There was a long, tense moment. The cheerful, hectic carnival music was at odds with the mood of the room.
In a quick motion, Damon pushed Caroline forward so that she fell onto the floor, landing hard and lying motionless. Bonnie gasped and rushed to her.
Looking past Stefan, Damon’s black eyes met Elena’s. “I won’t turn your friends,” he said shortly. His gaze shifted back to Stefan’s. “I won’t kill you, either, I suppose. Not now at least.”
There was no embrace between Stefan and Damon, no show of catharsis. But Elena caught a hint of a smile on Damon’s face—a small, private smile Elena had seen before, in the future she left behind. It was a smile Damon only ever gave to his brother.
Joy flooded through her, as if she was filling with sunlight. Mr. Tanner had survived. Bonnie and Meredith and Matt and Caroline—who Bonnie was fussing over now—were still human. Halloween night was almost over.
She was going to have a future. They were all going to live.
29
“It went really well, don’t you think?” Meredith said, tucking a long lock of dark hair behind her ear and looking up at the closed entrance to the Haunted House.
It was late, but they’d only managed to clear out all the customers about half an hour before. Across the parking lot, the last of the costumed workers were climbing into their cars, laughing and calling good-byes to one another. The heavy clouds that had hung overhead at the beginning of the evening had cleared and now stars shone brightly in the sky.