Then Damon caught Elena's eye, and all petty and conventional concerns seemed to drop away. Words appeared in his brain without bothering to come through his ears.
Help her. Please!
He turned back to the bathroom, lay Bonnie on the thick rug there and shelled her like a shrimp. Off with the sweatshirt, off with the summer top that went under it. Off with the small bra - A cup, he noticed sadly, discarding it, trying not to look at Bonnie directly. But he couldn't help but see that the prickling marks the tree had left were everywhere.
Off with the jeans, and then a small hitch because he had to sit and take each foot in his lap to get the tightly tied high-top sneakers off before the jeans would come past her ankles. Off with socks.
And that was all. Bonnie was left na**d except for her own blood and her pink silky underwear. He picked her up and put her in the tub, soaking himself in the process. Vampires associated baths with virgin's blood, but only the really crazy ones tried it.
The water in Bonnie's bathtub turned pink when he put her in. He kept the tap running because the tub was so large, and then sat back to consider the situation. The tree had been pumping something into her with its needles. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. So it ought to come out. Most sensible solution was to suck it as if it were a snakebite, but he was hesitant to try that until he was sure Elena wouldn't crush his skull if she found him methodically sucking Bonnie's upper body.
He would have to settle for next best. The bloody water didn't quite conceal Bonnie's diminutive form, but it helped to blur the details. Damon supported Bonnie's head against the edge of the tub with one hand, and with the other he began to squeeze and massage the poison out of one arm.
He knew he was doing the right thing when he smelled the resinous scent of pine. It was so thick and viscid itself that it hadn't yet disappeared into Bonnie's body. He was getting a small amount of it out this way, but was it enough?
Cautiously, watching the door and cranking his senses up to cover their broadest spectrum, Damon lifted Bonnie's hand to his lips as if he were going to kiss it. Instead, he took her wrist in his mouth and, suppressing every urge he had to bite, instead simply sucked.
He spat almost immediately. His mouth was full of resin. The massage wasn't enough by far. Even suction, if he could get a couple of dozen vampires and attach them all over Bonnie's little body like leeches, wouldn't be enough.
He sat back on his heels and looked at her, this fatally poisoned woman-child he'd as good as given his word to save. For the first time, he became aware that he was soaked to the waist. He gave an irritated glance toward the heavens and then shrugged out of his black bomber jacket.
What could he do? Bonnie needed medicine, but he had no idea what specific medicine she needed, and there was no witch he knew of to appeal to. Was Mrs. Flowers acquainted with arcane knowledge? Would she give it to him if she were? Or was she just a batty old lady? What was a generic medicine - for a human? He could give her over to her own people and let them try their bungling sciences - take her to a hospital - but they would be working with a girl who'd been poisoned by the Other Side, by the dark places they would never be allowed to see or understand.
Absently, he had been rubbing a towel over his arms and hands and black shirt. Now, he looked at the towel and decided that Bonnie deserved at least a sop to modesty, especially since he could think of no more work to be done on her. He soaked the towel and then spread it out and pushed it underwater to cover Bonnie from throat to feet. It floated in some places, sank in others, but generally did the job.
He turned the water temperature up again, but it made no difference. Bonnie was stiffening into the true death, young as she was. His peers in old Italy had had it right, he thought, a female like this was amaiden , no longer girl, not yet woman. It was especially apposite since any vampire could tell that she was a maiden in both senses.
And it had all been done under his nose. The lure, the pack-attack, the marvelous technique and synchronization - they had killed this maiden while he sat and watched. He'd applauded it.
Slowly, inside, Damon could feel something growing. It had sparked when he thought of the audacity of the malach, hunting his humans right under his nose. It didn't ask the question of when the group in the car had becomehis humans - he supposed it was because they had been so close lately that it seemed they were his to dispose of, to say whether they lived or died, or whether they became what he was. The growing thing surged when he'd thought of the way the malach had manipulated his thoughts, drawing him into a blissful contemplation of death in general terms, while death in very specific terms was going on right at his feet. And now it was reaching incendiary levels because he had been shown up too many times today. It really was unbearable....
...and it was Bonnie....
Bonnie, who had never hurt a - a harmless thing for malice. Bonnie, who was like a kitten, making airy pounces at no prey at all. Bonnie, with her hair that was called something strawberry, but that looked simply as if it was on fire. Bonnie of the translucent skin, with the delicate violet fjords and estuaries of veins all over her throat and inner arms. Bonnie, who had lately taken to looking at him sideways with her large childlike eyes, big and brown, under lashes like stars....
His jaws and canines were aching, and his mouth felt as if it were on fire from the poisonous resin. But all that could be ignored, because he was consumed with one other thought.
Bonnie had called for his help for nearly half an hour before succumbing to the darkness.
That was what needed to be said. Needed to be examined. Bonnie had called for Stefan - who had been too far away and too busy with his angel - but she had called for Damon, too, and she had pleaded for his help.