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“Neither do I really. Except that Stefan couldn’t keep his vow, could he? He knows he needs to have human blood.”
“We made him do it,” Bonnie said fiercely. “Matt and Meredith, and, yes, even Elena told him that he had to. And me.”
Something sparked in Damon’s eyes. “So the lovebirds are having conversations at will now?”
“Elena talked to him, to order him to do it,” Bonnie said, stretching a point.
Again, the feeling of rushing through the air, being lifted like a doll, and this time, ending up pinned against a tree. Her arms and legs were much too heavy to try any of the usual selfdefense in her repertoire. And of course there was no chance of screaming.
Damon’s face was close to her. There floated back to her a memory of a much more immature Bonnie saying that it would be so romantic to be killed by someone this handsome. She’d been a little idiot, that’s what she had been. God, if she could get her hands on that younger self of hers now . . .
“So you made Stefan take your blood,” he said, “but I’m still just a poor outsider, forced to stalk you for your own good.”
“I haven’t done it yet,” Bonnie said, knowing that she sounded like a kitten spitting rage with all its fur fluffed up. But then she thought of something else.
“Elena is watching you,” she said, combining what she was sure was the truth with the guess of the next question. “Elena wants to know what you’re going to do tonight. You said you were watching us for our own good. Are you going to help us? Help him? Or just watch?”
“I really haven’t decided,” Damon said, and Bonnie, looking into those blackasobsidian eyes, felt that this was the simple truth and all bets were truly off with him.
And, although tears flooded her eyes and down her cheeks, she wouldn’t look away from him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down entirely and whisper, “But we’re goners without you . . .”
“You’d be goners with me, too.’’ He plucked her thought out of the air. “You must know that. What you’re challenging isn’t beatable. That’s the truth, maybe not in words of one syllable but as simply as I can put it without resorting to sockpuppets. Do we understand?”
Bonnie was beyond being distressed over personal things.
“It’s the town I’m worried about. Fell’s Church—”
“Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. When you’ve seen enough of them as I have you develop an indifference. And this miserable place is hardly a dot on the map, anyway.” Bonnie looked up angrily but he had already turned on his bland face and his purring, persuasive voice.
“If you have blood to give to little brother, then you have blood to give to me,” he said, looking at her with lastpuppyintheshopeyes. “It doesn’t take much, you know.
And maybe it will persuade me . . .”
There was a word for this kind of exchange, or at least for the closest human equivalent, but Bonnie didn’t care. Despite the sharp thought, No!, that flashed across her mind, she looked up at Damon with eyes that were just as round and innocent as he ’d made his, and cornflower blue to boot. “Really? It might persuade you to stay and fight on our side?”
“It certainly would provide incentive, even if I don’t think we’d have a chance.”
“And you’d truly stay? You wouldn’t break your word a—”
“Little human, I have never broken my word.”
Bonnie didn’t take time to puzzle over this. She looked into Damon’s eyes—endless darkness there, unpierced by any ray of light—and she told herself firmly that she wasn’t going to faint. Damon was very different from Stefan, but what did it matter?
“Then do it,” she said hastily. “But do it quick, and somewhere Stefan won’t see it.
The back of my neck, maybe?”
She caught Damon staring at her. “You’d—”
“I’d do anything to help Fell’s Church. The people here are like my family. I’ve grown up with them. And this seems to be the only way I can try to help them.” Damon lifted her in his arms and turned her so that she faced away from him. But he did it slowly, as if fighting his way through molasses.
“You’re sure?” He seemed unable to believe, that after years of wooing Elena and her friends; after courting them and terrorizing them in turn, he had actually won the game.
“Yes,” Bonnie said. “Just be quick. Please.” What Bonnie was afraid of now was that Stefan and Meredith would finish too soon. Damon had hauled them into a little private clearing, so maybe there might be come excuse to make—but the whole thing would look bad. Boys made things so complicated.
“All right. I’ll make it quick,” Damon said in a dazed way. Then: “This will sting at first.”
“I know, I know.” Bonnie felt Damon’s breath on the back of her neck. He was holding up her hair, exposing her neck to the darkness. She shuddered, not because it was cold. Then she felt the touch of his lips there on her spinal cord, cooler than she would have imagined. He kissed her lightly and a wave of feeling went through her.
