Paradise Lost (The Vampire Diaries 20)

That was when he found that except for the sheer dimensions of the swollen aura, it was familiar to him. Too familiar, as a matter of fact. He’d known it all his life. It belonged to his younger brother, Stefan.

Instantly, rage washed over Damon again. There was only one way that Stefan’s aura could have gotten the way it was, and it explained why Elena’s life-force was so dim, and why Bonnie had sent that telepathic scream toward Damon.

Damon landed, changed into human form and sent his demand on a tight beam directly to Stefan, making no attempt to hide his feelings of contempt and white-hot fury. On the roof, little brother. And right this instant.

It never occurred to him for a moment to be afraid. The tremendous aura didn’t threaten him, it challenged.

It excited.

And just this minute it was moving toward him, as Stefan himself walked—rapidly and sinuously—out of a door on the roof.

“What in Hell happened?” Damon shouted at him. “What happened here?”

Stefan regarded him with eerily calm green eyes and spoke with no particular emphasis. “I killed Elena. I mean—a little—she might have been technically dead for an instant. She came right back. But I did it, yes. Basically, I exsanguinated her.”

Damon was taking in every aspect of Stefan’s behavior. Stefan was obviously and entirely insane. Damon pulled in his raging aura and took a couple of deep breaths. You had to step carefully around madmen in a conversation. Damon knew that because he’d so often been the madman himself. Insanity didn’t frighten him, but he had a healthy respect for it, especially when it was backed up by as much Power as Stefan had right now.

“And—Bonnie?” he said very softly, having an instant’s strange trouble getting the name out.. “You killed her—a little—too?”

“I didn’t hurt Bonnie.”

Suddenly Damon was a lot closer to Stefan than he had been and he was shouting; he had grabbed a fistful of Stefan’s shirt at the neck and he was twisting it, forcing Stefan up on his toes.

“Don’t you dare lie to me, you damned puerile little worm! I heard her scream! I felt her terror before she blacked out!”

Stefan did—something—and suddenly he was out of Damon’s grip and standing five feet away from him. His expression never changed and his strange green eyes never left Damon’s as he absently smoothed out his shirt.

“Bonnie was frightened,” he acknowledged. “But I didn’t hurt her, not really. I held her to keep her still and I bit her so that I could Influence her more easily. But her life-force is perfectly normal. Look at her and you’ll see.”

Damon looked down into the hospital. It meant taking his eyes off Stefan’s, but he had begun wondering if the stare-out was such a good idea, anyway. And something inside him was crouching in astonishment, muttering, Oh, yes, grab the crazy guy and yell at him. Brilliant survival policy. Where did you learn that, then? Suicide school?

Examining Bonnie, who was lying on a bed in a dim room, Damon could now sense her life force directly, and it was strong. He supposed he had really known this all along, but seeing her, feeling her heart beating steadily and her breath coming and going reassured him. The madman was right. She was only sleeping deeply.

“Still, you bit her,” he said coldly.

“I had to bite her,” Stefan repeated. He was gazing at something very far away. “I had no choice.”

Then he shut up and just went on gazing. Damon stared at his brother for a moment, and then worked his way back to the beginning of the conversation.

“But you told me that you bit Elena more than a little. You said you drained her.”

Was it his imagination, or had Stefan just flinched slightly at the word “drained?”

Better be careful here, he thought. “Why,” he asked quietly, did you do that? Did you two have some kind of fight?” Or, he thought cynically, safe behind a wall of very, very thick and complicated mental shielding, did you just finally realize how much Power you could get by taking that amount of human blood, especially blood from a teenager like Elena?

Stefan did the uncanny stare-out thing again. His green eyes were almost glowing.

“No,” he said, “to both suggestions. It wasn’t a fight and it wasn’t for gaining Power. It was an accident. It was . . . love.”

Suddenly Damon could taste the unpleasant copper of his own blood in his mouth. A whole host of vulgar words for what he wanted to say jostled for his attention, but he couldn’t bring himself to apply any of them to Elena.

“You were . . . having sex with her,” he said finally, with difficulty. White-hot anger seemed to hang just above his reach, but he was too tired to try to grasp it.

“No,” Stefan said again. “We just—we hadn’t been alone together since we moved into college. Fourteen days—no, fifteen, I think. We were just kissing.”

Kissing? thought Damon. O-kay. All right, then. Dangerous kissing. “And then?” he prompted.

“And then I bit her. She wanted me to. I wanted to. And I wanted to do whatever she wanted.”