The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unspoken (14 page)

It was late afternoon when Damon landed on the sill of Elena’s bedroom window. He balanced carefully on the slightly too-small ledge, his talons digging into the wood, and tapped hard with his beak on the window. Elena was in there, he could feel her, and he was too tired to wait.

The Power animal blood gave him didn’t last as long as he’d hoped, not as long as a
real
meal. He could have flown for longer on human blood, but now his wings were aching and he felt dizzy and sick. He hadn’t wanted to change back while he was out, in case another attack came. He wasn’t confident he would have the Power to turn into a crow again.

Elena’s quick steps crossed the room, and she yanked the window open. “Damon,” she said.

He fluttered through the window, brushing her face with his longest wing feather as he passed, and landed on
the wide soft bed before letting himself transform back into his real shape. Stretching out on Elena’s smooth white sheets, he rested his head on her pillow.

Elena’s face softened with surprise. “You’re as pale as a ghost,” she said. “Where have you been?”

Damon sighed. “The fake vampires found me. I didn’t want to come back here until I was sure I’d gotten rid of them.” Elena inhaled sharply, but Damon, closing his eyes, didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t sure if the false vampires had been tracking him, or if there were just a lot of them around, but whenever he’d been tempted to land, he had felt that strange metallic wrongness. Damon relaxed into the bed, rolling his shoulders back; he was terribly tired.

“Are you all right?” The mattress shifted as Elena sat down on the bed next to him. After a moment, her hand stroked softly over Damon’s arm. “You need blood,” Elena said firmly, and Damon opened his eyes to peer at her.

This still felt like something he shouldn’t be allowed to do, not with Stefan dead. But Elena scooted closer and lay down beside him, pushing her silky blond hair back to expose the long creamy line of her throat. Damon didn’t have it in him to resist her offer. Pulling her closer, he molded his body around Elena’s. He could feel his canines lengthening, aching with anticipation, and he kissed her neck gently before he laid the tips of his teeth against it.
His canines were so sensitive that he shuddered with pleasure as they touched her.

Elena made a soft, encouraging sound, and Damon bit down. For a moment, her skin was taut against his teeth, and then they plunged through, blood bursting rich and hot into his mouth.

With the blood came a rush of emotions: love, worry, guilt. Relief at being able to do something for Damon. Under everything, that same constant pounding grief for Stefan.

She was sensing Damon’s emotions in return, he knew. He stroked her arm, sending her all the reassurance he could: He was fine, more than fine when he was with her like this. Sometimes he thought all he needed was this, was Elena and his connection to her. He let himself rest against her, felt his lips curve into a smile against the skin of her neck.
Elena Elena Elena.

And then, unbidden, Meredith’s face swam up behind his eyes, and Elena twitched beneath his lips. He was usually better at shielding his thoughts than that; he’d had centuries of practice. He’d gotten distracted too easily.

Private
, Damon thought fiercely, half-hissing as he arched away, his teeth almost leaving her throat. He could feel Elena’s confusion echoing through her blood and their bond. There was a sudden coldness between them, where there had been only tenderness mere moments ago. She
began to pull away, and he tugged her back, close and warm against him, his arm around her.

He had promised Meredith, and now that he’d given his word, Damon couldn’t bring himself to break it. Once a gentleman, always a gentleman, he supposed.

He ran his fingers comfortingly through Elena’s silky hair in a silent apology, and worked his canines gently in and out of her throat, encouraging the flow of blood. Letting his mouth fill, he reached for his connection with Elena again. But she was holding back now. There was a strange hollow ache inside him, more than hunger.

As she pulled away from him at last, leaving him sated and warm with new blood, Elena wiped one hand across her neck. Damon’s gaze followed her hand as it carelessly smeared a single drop of blood toward her shoulder. When their eyes met again, Damon felt an unexpected pang.

She knew he was hiding something.

#TVD12Secrets

B
onnie came down the hall of her apartment building slowly, dragging her feet. She was sure the apartment would be empty and that she’d be having dinner alone again. She’d given up on expecting Zander to be there.

As she turned the corner toward her own door, she stopped in surprise. There was someone kneeling in the hall outside her apartment, crouching to push something under the door. Bonnie’s heart thumped hard, adrenaline zinging through her body, and then she realized who it was.

“Hey, Shay,” she said, coming closer. “What’s up?”

Shay, Zander’s second-in-command, looked up, her hands half-crumpling the edge of the envelope she had been slipping through the gap beneath their door. “Oh,” she said. “Bonnie. I was just leaving Zander a note.” Her
fingers scrabbled quickly, pulling the envelope back out from beneath the door. Standing, she stuffed the envelope into her pocket.

“Oh.”
Zander’s not home. Just as I expected.
“I can give it to him.” Bonnie reached out, but Shay stepped back, away from her.

“Never mind,” Shay said. “I’ll tell him when I see him.”

“But—” Bonnie gave up. Shay was already turning, her blond bob swinging, and walking away down the hall. She gave Bonnie a wave over her shoulder, not looking back.

“See you later, Bonnie.”

“Or not,” Bonnie muttered under her breath, unlocking the door. She tossed her keys on the hall table and kicked off her shoes before wandering toward the kitchen. The apartment felt quiet and still. She would have known right away that Zander once again wasn’t home, even if she hadn’t run into Shay.

In the dim kitchen, she drank a glass of water, and then absently arranged the flower-shaped magnets on the refrigerator door: red, blue, yellow, orange, red. The largest one held a note against the door.

B: I’ll be back late. Z

She glared at the note, and with a frustrated sweep of her hand, shoved the magnets so that they made a
skittering noise against the smooth white surface of the fridge. Zander’s note fell to the floor. The note told her
nothing
. It was almost worse than if he hadn’t left her any message at all.

And Bonnie wanted to talk to him, she needed someone levelheaded and laid-back—she needed
Zander
—to help her figure out what she should do.

When she had used the vampire blood to find Siobhan, it had pulled her along like a whirlwind. Back in high school, when Elena had been trapped by Klaus between life and death, Bonnie had used blood to summon Stefan and Damon back to Fell’s Church. Ethan had brought Klaus back to life, and Klaus had brought Katherine, with blood.

Bonnie knew blood was dangerous and full of Power. She wanted her magic to be full of light and energy, something that pulled on the growing, striving parts of nature.
Good
magic, not the shadowy ambiguous Power you found with blood and violence.

Still, though…

It was scary. It was a
really
scary idea, one that made Bonnie a little sick just thinking about it. But she couldn’t get it out of her head. Blood magic might be what Elena needed. If she could reach Stefan, talk to him one more time, it might give Elena peace, help to ease the grief she carried.

Bonnie crossed to the sink and ran herself another glass of cold tap water. Gulping it down, she stared at the wall and tried to clear her mind. It would be
worth
it, she told herself. Blood wasn’t evil, after all, and she didn’t want to use it for an evil purpose. This was important.

Setting the glass down in the bottom of the sink with a firm thump, Bonnie made up her mind. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Elena.

“Listen,” she said when her friend picked up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you have anything with Stefan’s blood still on it?”

After she got off the phone with Bonnie, Elena eased the bedroom door open and peeked in. Damon was asleep on the bed, his long black lashes heavy against his luminous pale skin. With his eyes closed and his cheeks still slightly flushed from drinking her blood, he looked surprisingly young.

Walking as quietly as she could, Elena crept through the room and to her closet. Damon shifted but didn’t wake as she opened the closet door. He must be exhausted; his reflexes were usually as quick as a cat’s. Elena was glad he didn’t wake. She didn’t want him to see this.

Remember how Ethan brought back Klaus?
Bonnie had asked.

Blood. It was all about blood. Feeling oddly breathless, Elena peered past hanging clothes, a pile of shoes, until she saw a crumpled paper grocery bag shoved back into the corner. Her chest tight with sorrow, she picked it up and tiptoed out of the room, clutching the bag against her.

She put the bag gently down in the passenger seat of her car and tried not to look at it until she got to Bonnie’s.

When she arrived, she hesitated in the doorway, surprised. Bonnie had used a marker to draw a huge black pentacle across the kitchen table, with strange sigils carefully marked inside. Black candles were placed at each point of the pentacle. A brass bowl full of what looked like herbs and roots sat at its center. Bonnie stood beside the table, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other, her small face drawn with worry.

“That isn’t going to come off,” Elena said, numbly. “You’ve ruined that table.” For a moment, the old wooden kitchen table felt terribly important.

“I don’t care,” Bonnie told her. “Did you find something?”

Elena handed her the bag. “I couldn’t—” she licked her lips nervously. “I couldn’t bear to throw out Stefan’s shirt, or wash it. So I just stuffed it in the back of our closet.”

“Oh.” Bonnie looked down at the bag and then hesitantly opened it and pulled out the black shirt. Elena remembered Stefan wearing the shirt that last night, how
soft it had been against her cheek the last time he held her in his arms.

Bonnie’s nose wrinkled, and a slight rotting smell wafted across the table. Elena flinched. That smell was Stefan’s blood. It had been long enough now that it was festering.

“You really think you can use the blood to bring him back, the way Ethan brought Klaus back?” she asked, her voice sounding thin and stretched to her own ears.

Bonnie bit her lip. “I don’t think so,” she confessed. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. Ethan had to use the bloodlines of all the vampires Klaus had made—that’s why he needed Stefan and Damon, because they were what was left of Katherine’s line. But Stefan never made any vampires at all. I do think we can do
something
, though. Maybe we can bring him back, at least for a little while. Or contact him, if he’s out there somewhere.”

“Long enough to say good-bye,” Elena said softly. Tears were forming in her eyes. “I’d like that.”