Stefan was lowering his head to meet her lips once more when someone suddenly lurched against them. Elena's breath puffed out in a soft huff of surprise, and she stumbled back a little, away from Stefan.
Immediately tense, Stefan felt himself fall into a fighting stance, his hands drawn up in fists. It took him a moment to realize there was nothing sinister here, no one he needed to defend Elena from. Just a group of people coming out of a bar, accidentally brushing against them. He shook off his aggression; he'd spent too long on the hunt lately.
"Sorry, sorry," one of the guys said, holding up his hands apologetically. He smiled at them. "My fault. Are you okay?"
The stranger was t
all, taller than Stefan, with sharp cheekbones, longish sand-colored hair, and curiously yellowish-green eyes, glowing like a cat's, or a coyote's. He wasn't a vampire, though, Stefan sensed with a quick brush of Power-just another human out for an evening with his friends. Elena murmured that everything was fine, no harm done.
"It was our fault," Stefan said courteously, and moved aside. But the stranger didn't walk on right away. He was looking at Elena. Their eyes caught for a moment, Elena's face creasing into a tiny frown as her clear blue gaze met the stranger's yellowish-green one-and then the moment was over. Stefan shook off the strange feeling their locked gazes had given him. Elena was beautiful; he should be used to people looking at her. With another murmured apology, the stranger moved on down the street, his friends reforming into a group around him.
Elena turned her attention back to Stefan, putting her arms around his neck and pulling him back down for another kiss. "Where were we?" she said, laughing up at him. "Right here? Right now?"
Chapter 5
"If your little pet is going to drag us all over the countryside, you're taking me out for a drink later," Damon told Katherine in an undertone, flashing a false, bright smile as he climbed the winding tower stairs.
"Oh, don't be a grouch, Damon," Katherine said sweetly. "You have to admit it's lovely here. "
"I don't have to admit anything," Damon said, but he felt the edges of his mouth tugging up in a more honest smile.
For days, Roberto had been begging to explore the white medieval tower they could see from the windows of their palazzo, in the rolling green hills outside of town. Tonight, Katherine had finally agreed to take him, like an indulgent parent giving in to a petulant child. For lack of any better options, Damon had consented to come, too.
Roberto ran eagerly ahead of them; Damon could hear his feet clattering on the stairs above their heads. The top of the first stairway opened into a large square room with a worn wooden floor, empty except for a huge fireplace at one end, but by the time Damon and Katherine stepped inside, Roberto was already climbing the next set of stairs.
"Avanti!" He called back in Italian, urging them on.
"Modern Italian doesn't sound right to me. " Damon sighed, a little wistfully. "Back in my homeland, and the children here speak garbled trash. "
"Things change," Katherine said with a shrug. "Like we said last night, even we do. I was born in the Hapsburg Empire, and it doesn't even exist anymore. You and I, we just adapt and keep going. " She slid him a sidelong look as they entered the next stairway, and her voice dripped with false sympathy. "Are you having a midlife crisis, Damon? Do you want me to hold your hand?"
Damon sneered halfheartedly at her. "As if I actually care about the decline of the Italian language," he said. "It's only that . . . this was home once, and now it's just another place. " What was curious, and a little alarming, he admitted to himself, was that the thought of home now brought to mind a small town in Virginia and the faces of a bunch of American children. Principally, of course, a face much like the one laughing back at him as Katherine sprang ahead up the stairway.
At the top of the tower, the starlit countryside stretched out before them. The surrounding area was full of vineyards, and the smell of growing grapes and warm earth rose up all around. The sun had set more than an hour ago, but the air was clear, and Damon could see the lights of the town in the valley below them. The moon was full and large, hanging low in the sky-a harvest moon.
"It's so beautiful here. I love places like this. " Roberto took Katherine's hand. "Was it like this, did you live somewhere like this, when you were alive?" His voice was full of longing, as if he was about to burst into an ode to Katherine and how he wished he could have known her always. Damon almost snorted when Katherine's eyes softened in response. It looked like Katherine was still finding little Roberto charming, which meant the boy would be traveling with them for a while longer.
Katherine was just beginning to answer when Damon stiffened and held up a hand to quiet her. There had been something . . . it came again. A small sound, the brush of a quick light step.
"Someone's coming up the stairs," he said.
Katherine cocked her head questioningly, and Roberto frowned, listening.
And then feet pounded on the stairs, all attempts at quietness abandoned. Alarmingly fast, before even Damon could move, a pack of people burst through the doorway and were upon them.
One caught Damon by the arm and threw him hard, so that he landed sprawling at the edge of the tower roof. He rolled quickly to his feet. Not people, then. Too fast, too strong. Something else.
The leader, a tall woman, bared her teeth, and Damon realized. Vampires. How had he not sensed them?
The tall vampire who'd led the charge held Katherine's arms pinned behind her and was angling to bite at her throat. Damon leaped toward them, throwing the attacker back while Katherine turned to quickly tear out her throat. A gout of blood sprayed across the white stone of the tower. Damon recovered quickly, back on the offensive, but there were too many of them, and they were already pressing closer, undeterred by the first vampire's death.
Instinctively, Damon and Katherine moved back to back, uniting against the threat, and Katherine pulled Roberto behind them, shielding the young vampire. Damon could feel her breath speeding up, and then she snarled, her hands bunching into claws. She was a good ally to have at his side.
There were so many of them, though, at least fifteen. Where had they come from, and what did they want?
Then several attacked Damon at once, snarling, coming from all three sides. The one in front of him, a dark-haired man, punched him in the face and moved back before he could respond, then punched and dodged again as the others worried him with teeth and nails from either direction. They were trying to get him away from Katherine and Roberto, Damon realized, trying to separate them so their opponents could use their greater numbers to overwhelm them.
Quick as a striking snake, Damon snapped the neck of one of the vampires attacking him from the side. He bared his teeth in a wild, joyous smile, then charged forward to grab hold of the dark-haired vampire in front of him, propelling him backward to the edge of the tower and sending him over in a flurry of flailing limbs. Not that the fall would kill him, but it would get him out of the picture, at least for now.