Almost without thinking, his left hand clenched into a fist around ashes soaked in droplets from the star ball full of pure Power. He packed the Power-loaded ash around the stake, around his chest and left upper arm. Then he dropped the fist and grasped a new handful of soaking ashes and did it again. And over and over and over.
After what seemed like a very long time Damon did something with his mind. He encircled the stake with Power and then let the Power flare. There was a moment of greater agony but then the poison eating at his heart—a wooden stake six feet long and sunk four feet deep into the ground below him—simply disappeared.
Good, Damon thought, and he fell asleep for a while without dreaming, his body feeling cool and refreshed.
* * *
Stefan felt feverish.
He was finished with Fell’s Church at last. He had saved the very hardest residence for the end, and it had drained him of Power until he was limp as a rag.
It had taken an enormous amount of Power to carefully dissect the memories of Meredith’s parents. Mrs. Sulez, in particular, had hung to the knowledge that she had not just a daughter, but a son, Meredith’s twin, who was a vampire. She also knew that her daughter was a secret vampire hunter, who had taken up the family ironwood stave, a spear that was meant to kill any kind of supernatural creature.
This stave was what Stefan had taken from Meredith’s dorm room at Dalcrest and had hidden in the nearby woods, high in the trees, with a magical barrier around it making it invisible to humans and eldritch beings alike. He would have to go back and retrieve it to destroy it . . . but not now. Right now he was so tired . . .
Abruptly, the ground rushed up and struck Stefan a blow in the face. He had fallen, bruising his cheekbone and bloodying his nose.
Mrs. Flowers had been right, he thought, fumbling for the hipflask of Black Magic she had given him. Although several deep drafts were enough to heal the bruised place and his swelling nose, Stefan knew that he had burned all his natural Power away in dealing with the many minds he’d Influenced tonight.
He should have drunk human blood from some of the townsfolk he had used his neuro-virus on. If he had taken human blood then, it wouldn’t be such a great question now whether he was going to be able to walk out of Fell’s Church and into the Old Wood where he had hidden Elena’s diaries in his car.
Dawn was tinting the sky green and rose and cerulean in the east and Stefan automatically fumbled in his windbreaker pocket for sunglasses. Weak as he was right now, he needed all the light-protection he could get.
Put one foot ahead of the other. That was what he needed to do. In the Old Wood he could hunt and then rest and recover.
Just keep walking, he tried to encourage himself. It was only a couple of miles. There was no question but that he had to get away from direct sunlight, at least not if he wanted to live.
* * *
Elena woke up, yawning and stretching like a cat. Then she sneezed. Damon wondered if she was going to start grooming her fur, but instead she spotted him and smiled dreamily, which temporarily deprived him of the power to speak.
“Good morning,” she said finally, and breathed deeply. Damon, who was holding a cup from which the unmistakable fragrance of mocha latte wafted, offered it to her.
“Bless you—but didn’t you get something for yourself?”
“Drank it already, princess.” Although Damon was not tired of nurses, who came in all shapes and sizes, he was aware that he had to be very careful. The hospital was still trying to solve the mystery of how Elena had lost so much blood, and it wouldn’t do to have any of the medical staff keeling over from “anemia.”
Elena was trying to brush her hair and drink her latte at the same time, all the while hampered by the tether of her IV. “I’ve just decided,” she said in a determined, confidential voice. “Today you and I are busting out of this joint.”
“We are, are we?” Damon felt the kind of tenderness he usually felt for—well, weaker girls—watching Elena fumbling helplessly. “Here, I’ll handle the hair while you drink your caffeine,” he added.
“Relax,” he said. “I can handle this. You get impatient and split the ends when you yank it at the bottom.” He began to slowly work his way through her hair, gently teasing out the tangles.
“Split ends? You’re really going to get it,” Elena said, clearly trying to sound ominous and failing entirely as her body had become suddenly pliant. She really was very sensitive to having her hair handled, Damon reflected. “Nobody’s done that for me since my mother died,” she added abruptly, tilting her head as he required. “I never would let Aunt Judith help. I don’t know why I’m letting you do it.”
Damon knew, but all he said was, “Let’s talk about you getting released today, even if it’s against medical advice.”
Once they’d discussed their plans, Elena completed her toilette alone. The doctors’ morning rounds interrupted her as she sought to wreak the revenge of a thousand kisses upon Damon for his early impudence in brushing her hair.
Everything was relatively simple after that. The doctors, with only a slight push from Damon, decided that Elena was more of a nuisance to modern medicine than a conundrum.
Red tape held the release process stationary all that morning, but by late afternoon Elena was able to leave, traveling by wheelchair to the curb outside Mercy Havenwick’s doors. Damon had flown back to the seedy bar in Pine Grove and retrieved his Ferrari Spider the previous night. They departed for Dalcrest in high style and excellent spirits.
Back at the dorm, Bonnie and Meredith and Matt and Caroline had gotten together and fixed up Elena’s room so that it was truly a thing of beauty.
They had decorated one wall with a giant wooden letter E painted turquoise and gold, with pictures framed in lavender, turquoise and gold all around it. A whiteboard was hung on another wall with “Welcome Home Elena!” written in Meredith’s best calligraphic script.
They had gotten rid of Elena’s single bed and replaced it with a queen-sized one that sported lavender linen. It was topped with a thick comforter decorated with sprawling exotic flowers in lavender and turquoise. The study desk was neatly prepared with Elena’s desktop and laptop computers, a scanner-printer, and an organizer with cubby holes that held pens, pencils, a stapler, a small first aid kit, and other necessary things. Elena’s textbooks were stacked neatly against the wall below the cubbies.