Matt just stared at Elena. "How could you do that?" he whispered finally.
"An object lesson in what it means to defy me. And surely you wouldn't want me to be sexist and leave her out?" Damontched . "You have to keep up with the times."
Matt said nothing. He had to get Elena out of this.
"Worrying about the girl? She's just playing possum now. Hoping I'll ignore her and concentrate on you."
"You're a liar."
"So I'll concentrate on you. Speaking of keeping up with the times, you know - except for the scratches and things, you're a fine-looking young man."
At first the words meant nothing to Matt. When he understood them, Matt could feel his blood freeze in his body.
"As a vampire, I can give you an informed and honest opinion. And as a vampire, I'm getting very thirsty. There's you. And then there's the girl who's still pretending to be asleep. I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at."
I believe in you, Elena, Matt thought. He's a liar, and he'll always be a liar. "Take my blood," he said wearily.
"Are you sure?" Now Damon sounded solicitous. "If you resist, the pain is horrible."
"Just get it over with."
"Whatever you like." Damon knelt fluidly on one knee, at the same time twisting his grip on Matt's hair, making Matt wince. The new grip dragged Matt's upper body across Damon's knee, so that his head was thrown back, his neck arched and exposed. In fact Matt had never felt so exposed, so helpless, so vulnerable in his life.
"You can always change your mind," Damon taunted him.
Matt shut his eyes, stubbornly saying nothing.
At the last moment, though, as Damon bent with fangs exposed, Matt's fingers almost involuntarily, almost as if it were something his body was doingapart from his mind, clenched themselves into a fist and he suddenly, unpredictably, brought the fist swinging up to deal a violent blow to Damon's temple. But - serpent-quick - Damon reached up and caught the blow almost nonchalantly in an open hand, and held Matt's fingers in a crushing grip - just as razor-sharp fangs opened a vein in Matt's throat and an open mouth fastened on his exposed throat, sucking and drinking the blood that sprayed upward.
Elena - awake but unable to move from where she had fallen, unable to make a sound or turn her head - was forced to listen to the entire exchange, forced to hear Matt's groan as his blood was taken against his will, as he resisted to the last.
And then she thought of something that, as dizzy and frightened as she was, almost made her pass out in fear.
Chapter 26
Ley lines. Stefan had spoken of them, and with the influence of the spirit world still on her, she had seen them without trying. Now, still lying on her side, channeling what remained of that Power to her eyes, she looked at the earth.
And that was what made her mind go gray in terror.
As far as she could see there were lines converging here from all directions. Thick lines that glowed with a cold phosphorescence, medium-sized lines that had the dull shine of bad mushrooms in a cellar, and tiny lines that looked like perfectly straight cracks of the outer surface layer of the world. They were like veins and arteries and nerves just under the skin of the clearing-beast.
No wonder it seemed alive. She was lying on a massive convergence of ley lines. And if the cemetery was worse than this - she couldn't imagine what it might look like.
If Damon had somehow found a way to tap into that Power...no wonder he seemed different, arrogant, undefeatable. Ever since he had released her to drink Matt's blood, she had kept shaking her head, trying to shake off the humiliation with it. But now finally she stopped as she tried to calculate a way to make use of this Power. There had to be a way to do it.
The grayness wouldn't clear from her vision. Finally Elena realized that it was not because she was faint, but because it was getting dark - twilight outside the clearing, true darkness coming into it.
She tried again to lift herself up, and this time she succeeded. Almost immediately a hand was extended to her and, automatically, she took it, letting it draw her to her feet.
She faced - whoever it was, Damon or whatever was using his features or his body. Despite the almost-darkness, he still wore those wraparound sunglasses. She could make nothing out of the rest of his face.
"Now," the thing in the sunglasses said. "You're going to come with me."
It was nearing full dark, and they were in the clearing that was a beast.
This place - it was unwholesome. She was afraid of the clearing as she had never been afraid of a person or creature. It resounded with malevolence, and she couldn't shut her ears to it.
She had to keep thinking, and keep thinking straight, she thought.
She was terribly frightened for Matt; frightened that Damon had taken too much blood or had played too hard with his toy; breaking it.
And she was afraid of this Damon thing. She was also worried about the influence this place might have had on the real Damon. The woods around them shouldn't have any effect on vampires, except to hurt them. Was the possible-Damon inside the possessor hurt? If he could understand anything of what was happening, could he distinguish that hurt from his hurt and anger at Stefan?
She didn't know. She did know that there had been a terrible look in his eyes when Stefan had told him to get out of the boardinghouse. And she did know that there were creatures in the forest, malach, that could influence a person's mind. She was afraid, deeply afraid, that the malach were using Damon now, blackening his darkest desires and twisting him into something horrible, something he had never been even at his worst.
But how could she be sure? How could she know whether or not there was something else behind the malach, something that controlledthem ? Her soul was telling her that this might be the case, that Damon might be completely unconscious of what his body was doing, but that might just be wishful thinking.