Two were right here in Fell's Church,a little mocking counterpoint in his mind said, but Damon shrugged that off disdainfully. Surely there could be no other vampire Elders nearby, or he would sense them. Ordinary vampires, yes, they were already flocking. But they were all too weak to enterhis mind.
He was equally certain there was no creature within range that could challenge him. He would have sensed it as he sensed the blazing ley lines of uncanny magical power that formed a nexus under Fell's Church.
He looked at Caroline again, still held motionless by the trance he'd put on her. She would come out of it gradually, none the worse for the experience - for whathe'd done to her, at least.
He turned and, as gracefully as a panther, swung out of the window, onto the tree - and then dropped easily thirty feet to the ground.
Chapter 2
Damon had to wait some hours for another opportunity to feed - there were too many girls in deep sleep - and he was furious. The hunger that the manipulative creature had roused in him was real, even if it hadn't succeeded in making him its puppet. He needed blood; and he needed itsoon .
Only then would he think over the implications of Caroline's strange mirror-guest: that trulydemonic demon lover who had handed her over to Damon to be killed, even while pretending to make a deal with her.
NineA.M . saw him driving down the main street of the town, past an antique store, eateries, a shop for greeting cards.
Wait. There it was. A new store that sold sunglasses. He parked and got out of the car with an elegance of motion born of centuries of careless movement that wasted not an erg of energy. Once again, Damon flashed the instantaneous smile, and then he turned it off, admiring himself in the dark glass of the window. Yes, no matter how you look at it, I am gorgeous, he thought absently.
The door had a bell that made a tinkling sound as he entered. Inside was a plump and very pretty girl with brown hair tied back and large blue eyes.
She had seen Damon and she was smiling shyly.
"Hi." And though he hadn't asked, she added, in a voice that quavered, "I'm Page."
Damon gave her a long, unhurried look that ended in a smile, slow and brilliant and complicit. "Hello, Page," he said, drawing it out.
Page swallowed. "Can I help you?"
"Oh, yes," Damon said, holding her with his eyes, "I think so."
He turned serious. "Did you know," he said, "that you really belong as a chatelaine in a castle in the Middle Ages?"
Page went white, then blushed furiously - and looked all the better for it. "I - I always wished that I'd been born back then. But how could you know that?"
Damon just smiled.
Elena looked at Stefan with wide eyes that were the dark blue of lapis lazuli with a scattering of gold. He'd just told her that she was going to have Visitors! In all the seven days of her life, since she had returned from the afterlife, she had never - ever - had a Visitor.
First thing, right away, was to find out what a Visitor was.
Fifteen minutes after entering the sunglasses shop, Damon was walking down the sidewalk, wearing a brand-new pair of Ray-Bans and whistling.
Page was taking a little nap on the floor. Later, her boss would threaten to make her pay for the Ray-Bans herself. But right now she felt warm and deliriously happy - and she had a memory of ecstasy that she would never entirely forget.
Damon window-shopped, although not exactly the way a human would. A sweet old woman behind the counter of the greeting cards shop...no. A guy at the electronics shop...no.
But...something drew him back to the electronics shop. Such clever devices they were inventing these days. He had a strong urge to acquire a palm-sized video camera. Damon was used to following his urges and was not picky about donors in an emergency. Blood was blood, whatever vessel it came in. A few minutes after he'd been shown how to work the little toy, he was walking down the sidewalk with it in his pocket.
He was enjoying just walking, although his fangs were aching again. Strange, he should be sated - but then, he'd had almost nothing yesterday. That must be why he still felt hungry; that and the Power he'd used on the damnable parasite in Caroline's room. But meanwhile he took pleasure in the way his muscles were working together smoothly and without effort, like a well-oiled machine, making every movement a delight.
He stretched once, for the pure animal enjoyment of it, and then stopped again to examine himself in the window of the antiques store. Slightly more disheveled, but otherwise as beautiful as ever. And he'd been right; the Ray-Bans looked wicked on him. The antiques store was owned, he knew, by a widow with a very pretty, very young niece.
It was dim and air-conditioned inside.
"Do you know," he asked the niece when she came to wait on him, "that you strike me as someone who would like to see a lot of foreign countries?"
Some time after Stefan explained to Elena that Visitors were her friends, hergood friends, he wanted her to get dressed. Elena didn't understand why. It was hot. She had given in to wearing a Night Gown (for at least most of the night), but the daytime was even warmer, and she didn't have a Day Gown.
Besides, the clothes he was offering her - a pair of his jeans rolled up at the hems and a polo shirt that would be much too big - were...wrong somehow. When she touched the shirt she got pictures of hundreds of women in small rooms, all using sewing machines in bad light, all working frantically.
"From a sweat shop?" Stefan said, startled, when she showed him the picture in her mind."These?" He dropped the clothes on the floor of the closet hastily.
"What about this one?" Stefan handed her a different shirt.
Elena studied it soberly, held it to her cheek. No sweating, frantically sewing women.