"There's a modern bathroom here?" Damon asked Shinichi.
"There's whatever you want; just decide before you open a door and unlock it with this key. And now..." Shinichi stretched, his golden eyes half shut. He ran a languid hand through his shiny black hair tipped with flame. "Now, I think I'll go sleep under a bush."
"Is that all you ever do?" Damon made no attempt to keep the biting sarcasm out of his voice.
"And have fun with Misao. And fight. And go to the tournaments. They - well, you'll have to come and see one for yourself."
"I don't care to go anywhere." Damon didn't want to know what this fox and his sister considered fun.
Shinichi reached out and took the miniature cauldron full of boiling water off the fire. He poured the boiling water over the collection of tree bark, leaves, and other detritus in the battered metal teapot.
"Why don't you go find a bushnow ?" Damon said - and it wasn't a suggestion. He'd had enough of the fox, who had served his purpose now anyway, and he didn't care a bit about whatever mischief Shinichi might make for other people. All he wanted was to be alone - with Elena.
"Remember; get her to drink it all if you want to keep her for a while. She's pretty much unsalvageable without it." Shinichi poured through a fine sieve the infusion of dark green tea. "Better try before she wakes up."
"Will you justget out of here ?"
When Shinichi stepped through the dimensional crack, taking care to turn just the right way so as to reach the real world, and not some other globe, he was steaming. He wanted to go back and thrash Damon within an inch of his life. He wanted to activate the malach inside Damon and cause him to...well, of course, notquite kill sweet Elena. She was a blossom with nectar untasted, and Shinichi was in no hurry to see her buried underground.
But as for the rest of the idea...yes, he decided. Now he knew what he would do. It would be simply delicious to watch Damon and Elena make up, and then, during the Moonspire Festival tonight, to bring back the monster. He could let Damon go on believing they were "allies," and then, in the middle of their little spree - let the possessed Damon loose. Show that he, Shinichi, had been in control all along.
He would punish Elena in ways she had never dreamed about and she would die in delicious agony...at Damon's hand. Shinichi's tails quivered a little ecstatically at the thought. But for now, let them laugh and joke together. Revenge only ripened with time, and Damon was really quite difficult to control when he was raging.
It hurt to admit that, just as his tail - the physical one in the center - hurt from Damon's abominable cruelty to animals. When Damon was in a passion it took every ounce of Shinichi's concentration to control him.
But at Moonspire Damon would be calm, would be placid. He'd be pleased with himself, as he and Elena would undoubtedly have laid some absurd plot to try to stop Shinichi.
Thatwould be when the fun would begin.
Elena would make a beautiful slave while she lasted.
With the kitsune gone, Damon felt that he could behave more naturally. Keeping a firm grasp on Elena's mind, he picked up the cup. He tried a sip of the mixture himself before trying it on her and found it tasted just slightly less nauseating than it smelled. However, Elena really had no choice, she could not do anything of her own volition, and little by little, the mixture went down.
And then a dose of his blood went down. Again, Elena was unconscious and had no choice in the matter.
And then she'd gone to sleep by herself.
Damon paced restlessly. He had a memory that was more like a dream floating around in his head. It was of Elena trying to throw herself out of a Ferrari going about 100 kilometers an hour, to get away from - what?
Him?
Why?
Not, in any case, the best of beginnings.
But that wasall he could remember! Damn it! Whatever came right before it was a total blank. Had he hurt Stefan? No, Stefan was gone. It had been the other boy with her, Mutt.What had happened?
Damn it tohell ! He had to figure out what had happened so he could explain it all to Elena when she woke up. He wanted her to believe him, to trust him. He didn't want Elena as a one-night bleeder. He wanted her tochoose him. He wanted her to see how much better suited she was to him than to his mousy, milksop brother.
His princess of darkness. That was what she wasmeant to be. With him as king, consort, whatever she wished. When she saw things more clearly, she would understand that it didn't matter. That nothing mattered except them being together.
He viewed her body, veiled under the sheet, with dispassion - no, with positiveguilt .Dio mio - what if he hadn't found her? He couldn't get the picture out of his mind of how she'd looked, stumbling forward like that...lying there breathless...kissing his hand...
Damon sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why had she been in the Ferrari with him? She'd been angry - no, not angry. Furious was closer but so frightened...ofhim . He could picture that clearly now, the moment of her throwing herself out of the speeding car, but he couldn't remember anything before it.
Was he going out of his mind?
What had been done to her? No...Damon forced his thoughts away from the easy question and made himself ask thereal question. What hadhe done to her? Elena's eyes, blue with golden flecks, like lapis lazuli, were easy to read even without telepathy. What had...he...done to her that was so frightening that she would jump out of a speeding car to get away from him?
He'd been taunting the fair-haired boy. Mutt...Gnat...whatever. The three of them had been together, and he and Elena had been...damn! From there to his awakening at the steering wheel of the Ferrari, all was a shimmering blank. He could remember saving Bonnie at Caroline's house; he could remember being late for his 4:44A.M . meeting with Stefan; but after that, things began to fragment.Shinichi , maledicalo! That fox! He knew more about this than he was telling Damon.