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"I will help you if I can," Andres told her. "But if your task passes to me, I won't have a choice. "
Elena nodded and stood up briskly. Stefan started to follow her, but she put a hand on his shoulder and gently pressed him back down. "This one I have to do by myself," she said apologetically. She kissed him lightly, her lips warm, and Stefan tried to send all the love and trust he could to her.
I have something I have to take care of, too, he thought. He didn't know when he'd back. This might, he realized with a flare of breathless panic, be the last time they saw each other. His arms tightened around her, holding on to her for as long as he could. Please, Elena, be careful.
Finding Damon was easy. When Elena opened herself to the nagging ache that had been inside her all day, barely touching on her Power, the path to Damon appeared ahead of her and all she had to do was follow the vivid black and red.
This time, it led to a seedy-looking building with a sign out front that read EDDIE'S BILLIARDS. It was open, but there were only a couple of cars in the parking lot. It looked more like a nighttime place. Frankly, it didn't look like Elena's kind of place at all, and she felt a little nervous walking up to the doors. I've been to the Dark Dimension, she reminded herself. I'm a Guardian. There's nothing here that can scare me. She pushed through the doors and boldly
stepped inside.
The bartender made eye contact with her for a moment and then turned back to his chore, polishing glasses. Two men sat at a small round table in the corner, smoking and talking quietly. They didn't even glance up at her. All but one of the pool tables were empty.
There, in the middle of the room, Damon leaned over the pool table, lining up his cue to take a shot. He looked tough in his leather jacket, Elena thought, rougher and somehow less elegant than he usually did. A shorter, fairer man hovered behind him. As he made the shot, Damon flicked his eyes up toward Elena, cool and black and giving nothing away.
"Game's over," he said briefly to his companion, despite the colored balls still littering the table. Damon picked up the wad of bills on the corner of the table and stuffed them into his pocket. The sandy-haired guy seemed about to speak at this, but then bit his lip and stared at the floor, remaining silent.
"You don't give up, do you?" Damon said, crossing the room toward Elena in a few quick steps. He seemed to be weighing her up with his dark, considering gaze. "I told you, I won't be any help to you anymore, princess. "
Elena felt her cheeks heat up. Damon always called her princess, but this time the nickname lacked the affection she was used to. Now it sounded dismissive, as if he couldn't be bothered to use her real name. She stiffened, using the flash of anger to help her start talking.
"You're in trouble, Damon," she said brusquely. "The Principal Guardians want you dead. They've assigned me to kill you. " For a moment, she thought Damon looked startled, and she pushed forward. "I don't want to do it, Damon," she said, letting a pleading note creep into her voice. "I can't. But maybe it's not too late. If you change what you're doing . . . "
Damon shrugged. "Do what you have to do, princess," he said lightly. "The Guardians couldn't keep me dead before - I'm not too worried now. " He started to turn away, and Elena sidestepped to block his path.
"You have to take this seriously, Damon," she said. "They will kill you. "
Damon sighed. "Frankly," he said, "I think they're overreacting. So I killed someone. It was one girl, in a world of millions of girls. " He glanced over her shoulder, back at the pool table. "Jimmy? Rack them up. "
Feeling like she'd been punched in the stomach, Elena gaped breathlessly, then followed him back to the table. Jimmy arranged the balls and Damon broke, carefully angling his cue. "What do you mean, you killed someone?" she said at last in a tiny voice.
Something she couldn't quite identify flickered over Damon's face, but then it was gone. "I'm afraid I got carried away," he said lightly. "Happens to the best of us, I suppose. " He knocked a ball into a pocket and circled the table to take another shot.
Elena's mind was turning over what she'd seen: the girl she and Stefan had found unconscious in the woods, the girl Damon had been feeding on near the athletic fields. They'd been fine in the end, hadn't they? She and Stefan had made sure they got home safely. Dread coiled inside her as she finally realized what he was saying. Damon had killed someone else, someone they hadn't found. She'd been holding out hope for him, but he was murdering again, and she hadn't even known.
She made an effort now to see Damon's aura, and it became visible almost immediately. Elena winced in dismay at the sight. It was so dark, all the color almost swallowed up in blackness now, cut with repulsive winding strains of dried-blood red. Surely there was still something else there? She saw a wisp of greenish-blue close to Damon's body, but just as quickly as it appeared, it was covered again in darkness.
Still, that glimpse of color gave her a bit of hope. Damon wasn't lost yet. He couldn't be.
Impulsively, she followed Damon to the other side of the table and laid a hand on his arm. His muscles twitched once, as if about to pull away, then grew still. "Please, Damon," she said. "I know this isn't you. You're not a killer, not anymore. I love you. Please. "
Damon placed his cue carefully on the table and glared at her, his body tense and strained. "You love me?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. "You don't even know me, princess. I'm not your lapdog - I'm a vampire. Do you know what that means?" Elena involuntarily stepped back, alarmed by the anger in Damon's eyes, and his lips tipped up in a tiny smirk. "Jimmy," he called over his shoulder, and the guy he'd been playing pool with came over to them, still holding his cue.
"Yeah?" he said hesitantly, and Elena heard it in his tone: he was afraid of Damon. Glancing around, she could see the bartender hurriedly averting his eyes from them, as if he, too, was afraid. The two men from the table in the corner had slipped out while she was talking to Damon.
"Give me your cue," Damon said, and Jimmy handed it to him. Damon snapped it in two as easily as Elena herself would have torn a piece of paper and looked speculatively at the pieces in his hands. From one half extended long, jagged splinters of wood, and Damon handed that half back to Jimmy.
"Now take this and stab yourself with it," he said calmly. "Keep going until I tell you to stop. "
"Damon, no! Don't do it," she told Jimmy. "Fight it. "
Jimmy, staring at the cue, hesitated, and Elena felt the sudden snap of Power as Jimmy's face went distant and dreamy, and he raised the pool cue and jabbed it hard at his own stomach. As the cue made contact, he gave a harsh exhalation of breath, but his face remained unconcerned, his mind disconnected from what his body was doing. Jimmy pulled the cue back again, and Elena could see a long bloody streak where one of the splinters had gone into his side.
"Stop it!" Elena shouted.
"Harder," Damon ordered, "and faster. " Jimmy obeyed, the cue snapping back and forth roughly. Blood was running down his shirt now. Damon watched with a small smile, his eyes bright. "Being a vampire," he said to Elena, "means that I like being in control. I like blood, too. And I don't have to care about human pain, any more than you do about the pain of the insect you tread on as you walk down the street. "
"Please stop it," Elena said, horrified. "Don't hurt him any more. "
