“All right,” Damon said, allowing himself to be reeled in to bend over her and speaking lightly but with a touch of thoughtful consideration. “If I smile when I am moderately angry, what do I do when I’m properly furious?”
“Oh, then you beam.”
He swooped down on her then. There was nothing else to do. She did know him too well, and he had no desire to change the state of her mind. He just needed an interruption.
A month or so ago, he would have said something—something outrageous, as she had pointed out—just to watch the blood leap and flame in her cheeks and to see what kind of riposte she would make. Now . . . well, he had no particular desire to outrage her. Not ten minutes ago she had offered him complete access to her soul. She was being meltingly tender as she had never been with him in her life. He understood that if he wanted to spar with her, he would have to find some subject beside Stefan on which they disagreed.
It was easiest just to tickle her—a very little, given that she was still in bondage to her machines.
“Don’t, don’t,” Elena ordered just as his fingers made contact with her vulnerable side, covered only by her cloth hospital gown. “No, please don’t! Look, I’m doing my homework, right? I have to do my homework before tomorrow! I’m writing about Warm Springs. You can help by reminding me of what happened on one of our picnics.”
I was dead—or mostly—while you were having picnics, he thought. Then, more leniently, well, you only had the one and that was to amuse Alaric Saltzman when he came into town to see Meredith.
Even as he settled back and began spinning a story of what might have happened at Warm Springs for Elena’s memoir, his mind dwelt lovingly on the happy days ahead when she would positively hate him . . . and still be unable to hold back her passionate response to his nearness.
* * *
Hours later, after Elena had finished her homework and been lulled to sleep, after Damon had wandered down a floor of the hospital in order to find fresh nurses, he came back to the ICU room and sat in the chair, holding Elena’s hand.
Eventually, he slept.
* * *
Damon dreamed.
He was back on the Nether World moon, with a stake through his body. Bad as that was, there was worse. He had used the last of the Power in his body in order to say goodbye to Elena, to Bonnie, to Stefan. They were gone now, certain that he was at rest. Instead, hideously, he was paralyzed but conscious. He had drifted into the darkness for a while, yes, but then he had found himself lying on his back while tiny flakes of ash and droplets of liquid fell on him, reviving him, and he had clenched his fist and known who he was.
But . . . ash? It didn’t make sense. And the liquid . . . somehow the liquid was refreshing and invigorating. On this moon, where the sky had been blocked by the magnificent canopy of the one Tree that inhabited it, he was lying in the open with bits of debris falling on him.
Uh oh, he thought—deliberately frivolous since the pain of the stake through his body and the woody fibers that extended along his capillaries was still agonizing—someone has been a very, ve
ry naughty girl indeed.
There was only one reason for ash to be precipitating out of the sky. There was only one reason for the sheltering Tree to be gone so that he could feel ash being precipitated out of the sky.
Some bad girl had blown the Tree up. The ash was the remnants of that towering giant’s trunk and branches and leaves.
Damon tried to flash a blinding, ferocious smile at nothing at all, but he couldn’t; he was paralyzed, except for one hand that feebly clutched at the ashes by his side.
He knew what had happened though. While he had been in the dark place, Elena had unleashed the ultimate forbidden spell. Wings of Destruction.
He hoped that she hadn’t blown herself and Bonnie and his little brother up, too. But since Damon’s own body seemed to be intact, if ravaged by wood, she had probably protected them. Damon certainly couldn’t smell blood in the soft rain that fell.
What was the liquid, then? What was it that soothed the pain as it worked its heavy way below the ash to soak his clothes and face and hair?
He spent what seemed an eternity just wondering, as more and more of the wet droplets, each infinitesimal, lulled the agony that gripped his body.
By the time the answer finally came he was exasperated with himself. There was only one possibility and he was an idiot not to have recognized it at once. The largest star ball in all the worlds had been resting in the fork of the Tree just above where Damon had been staked. Elena had blown it up when she loosed destruction on the entire moon.
And now the liquid inside it, which was pure Power in fluid form, was falling directly down on him.
I’m not going to die, Damon realized, with a tiny frisson of concern rippling over his skin. He was not going to die, but was he going to lie here for all eternity, paralyzed and staked, conscious of nothing but the dreadful pain of the wood against his every cell?
Maybe not. Maybe he could set the liquid Power falling on him to work, drop by drop. Maybe it could slowly repair his nervous system, give him back the power to move again.
First, though, he had to get rid of what was poisoning his heart, what would defy any attempt at recovery. He had to get the stake out.
Pulling it—even if he could do that much with only his left hand working—would have the unfortunate consequence of ripping chunks of his heart out, too.