Destiny Rising (The Vampire Diaries 10)

"Yeah. " Elena sighed. "Maybe not entirely evil. Damon's not, I know that. But he's not doing well. I don't think that girl we found is the only one he's attacked. His aura was . . . violent. Angry. "

Stefan's shoulders slumped, and he leaned against her desk. "I know," he said. "I told you what he was like when I tried to talk to him. I think we need to give him some space. You can't push Damon. He's just going to do exactly what he wants, especially if you try to control him. "

"There must be something we can do," Elena said. Her voice sounded scratchy to her own ears, rough with misery.

Crossing the space between them in one step, Stefan took her hand and looked down at her, his eyes dark and troubled. "It's never going to be just us, is it?" he said sadly. "Damon will always be standing between us, even when he's not here. "

"Stefan, no!" she said fiercely. Stefan cast his gaze down sadly at their entwined fingers. "Look at me!" she urged. He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers again. "I love you, Stefan. I care for Damon, he's part of me now, but that's nothing compared to what I feel for you. It's just us, you and me, and that's how it's going to be. Always. "

Elena pulled him closer, desperate to show him this truth. Their lips met in a long kiss.

Stefan, she thought, oh, Stefan. Elena let herself open fully to him. Exposed and vulnerable, she showed Stefan the love she had for him, her joy at having come back to him at last. Wonderingly, Stefan gradually took in her emotions. She could feel him pushing gently at the walls she'd always kept in her mind, the little shameful secrets, the part of herself she'd always wanted to hide from him. But Elena pulled the barriers down, showing him that there was nothing there but love for him, only him.

Stefan sighed against her lips, a tiny exhalation of breath, and she felt peace flood through him as he understood that, at last, he was the only one for her.

As the couple inside clung to each other, a large crow clenched its claws tightly around a tree branch in the darkness outside the dorm room's window. It wasn't as if he had been holding out hope, though. He had tried his best with Elena, had given her what he thought she wanted, had shown her what he had to offer. He had changed himself for her.

And she had turned away from him and chosen Stefan. She still felt nothing for him, not compared to her feelings for Stefan.

Fine. Damon should have known better than to care. What he had told Stefan, what he had told Elena, was right: he was done with them, done with all of them. Why should he follow around one human girl when there was a wide world out there waiting for him?

Damon spread his wings and pitched himself off the tree branch and into the night. Riding the soft breezes over campus, he tried to think about where he should go next. Thailand, maybe. Singapore. Japan. He had never spent much time in Asia; perhaps it was time to conquer new places, to be the mysterious, cold-eyed stranger again, to feel the rushing sea of humanity surging all around him while he held himself separate and alone.

It will be good to be alone again, he told himself. Vampires weren't pack animals, after all.

As he pondered his future, he watched the paths of the campus and then the streets of the town beneath him in an absentminded, habitual way. A lone female jogger, young and blond, was running along below him, hair pulled into a ponytail, earbuds in place. Idiot, he thought scathingly. Doesn't she know how dangerous this place is right now?

Without letting himself consider what he intended, Damon glided down and resumed his human form, landing silently on the sidewalk a few yards behind the jogger. He stopped for a moment and fastidiously adjusted his clothing, long-ago words of his father's echoing in his mind: a gentleman can be told by the care he takes of his appearance and by

the precision of his dress.

Then he moved quickly and gracefully after the girl, letting loose a little Power so that he was faster than any human could be.

He jerked her off her feet as easily as plucking a flower from its stem, and pulled her into his arms. She gave one sudden, aborted squeak and struggled briefly as he sank his sharp canines into her throat, then grew still. He had no reason to stop himself, not now.

It was so good. He'd been soothing his girls, making it painless for them for so long, and the pure adrenaline of her fear rocketed through his system. It was even better than the girl in the woods, who had already been dizzy and pliant with blood loss when he let the calming compulsion drop.

Damon drank down deep gulps of blood, feeding his Power. Her heart slowed, staggered, and he felt that dizzyingly sweet moment when her slackened pulse matched the unnatural pace of his own. Her life flowed into him steadily, warming his cold bones.

And then everything - her heartbeat, the blood flow - stopped.

Damon let her body drop to the sidewalk and wiped his mouth with one hand. He felt drunk on her, buzzing with the energy he'd taken into himself. Here I am, he thought with sour triumph, the real Damon, back again.

On the back of his hand was a smear of the girl's blood. He licked it off, but it tasted wrong, not as sweet as it should have. As the sheer physical pleasure of taking the blood, of taking it all the way to death, wore off, Damon could feel a sharp ache just below his breastbone. He pressed one hand to his chest.

There was an empty place inside him: a hole in his chest that all the blood, all the blood of the prettiest girls in the world, could never fill.

Unwillingly, he looked down at the body at his feet. He would have to hide it, he supposed. He couldn't leave her here, exposed on the sidewalk.

The girl's eyes were open in a flat, unseeing stare, and she seemed to be gazing back at him. She was so young, Damon thought.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice small. He reached down and carefully pressed her eyes closed. She seemed more peaceful that way. "I am sorry," he said again. "It wasn't your fault. "

There didn't seem to be anything else to say or do. With an effortless swoop, he picked up the girl's body and walked on, into the night.

Chapter 16

"Okay," Alaric said, panting a little. "According to these directions, the white ash tree should be on the bank of a stream, only about half a mile farther from here. "