Title: Love's Fool
Summary: Elena made her choice and Damon kept up his end of the deal. He left Mystic Falls more than a year ago and he hasn't looked back since. Now the Original stake has gone missing and suddenly they need him again. But Damon has no intention of playing their whipping boy anymore and this time he has a powerful ally on his side.
Spoilers: Everything through the S3 finale.
Pairings: Delena.
Disclaimer: If I owned Vampire Diaries there would be a lot less of Damon getting left to die heartbroken and alone. As it is, I can only hope to vent my frustration by punishing those characters responsible.
Note: Thanks to everyone for your awesome reviews. I plan to reply to them, but I just haven't gotten the chance yet. Real life is keeping me pretty busy at the moment. But you guys and your encouragement really do keep me going. I hope you enjoy this chapter. I actually had the second part all typed out and was planning to go further from there when the first part just kinda snuck up on me and insisted to be written. Let me know what you think! :-)
Warning: References to violence, to rough sex, hints of bloodplay.
Chapter Eleven
Something had to give…
He could feel it humming beneath his skin. He felt hot, tense, on edge. He knew the signs. He'd been here before. He could feel his nerves jumping, his teeth grinding, feel the animal lurch against its bonds as it roared in thwarted rage. It needed to rip, to tear, to fuck, to kill.
Release…he needed release. He needed a long stretch of virgin neck just waiting to be sampled…young, innocent, terrified, but always mixed with a burning dark excitement not quite concealed. A gasp followed by the utter bliss of hot blood pouring down his throat. Stifled whimpers and moans dancing the fine line between pleasure and pain. Breathing deep and savoring the perfume of fear and arousal soaking the air.
He needed a tight pussy squeezing his cock, warm thighs wrapped around his hips, nails down his back, heels digging into his ass. An arm under one thigh, lifting and spreading her wide, hitting the right angle, the right depth as that velvet grip milked away all the thoughts and confusion…the guilt and the pain. The gasps and moans in the air, racing to the top, thrusting home and flying over the edge into sharp mindless pleasure. The brief oblivion that follows…freedom, escape…the boulder lifted off of his chest so he can breathe again for just one fucking second.
He needed to stare into bright terrified eyes, watch the tears well over, the fear and the pain, and then that perfect stunning spark of clarity, of epiphany right before they fade into blank calm. He needed that spark, that sharp shot of life, of death, of finite and infinite, of now and eternity.
"Damon…"
She swam into his vision, straddling his waist, dark dancing eyes and sharp curved lips. Wearing a black lace bra and barely-there matching thong, she looked like a dark queen sent to torment and conquer him. She pinned his arms to the bed over his head, lowered her mouth to his neck, her chestnut hair tickling his face as he bucked his hips in a half-hearted attempt to fight her off. Her husky chuckle cut through the silence. She purred and rubbed against him like a cat. The friction of her lace-covered crotch against his hard dick made him hiss and roll to meet her. The familiar scrape of a razor-sharp fang along his jugular had him gasping and bowing his back as he fought not to come like an untried youth with his first woman.
"Katherine, get the fuck off me," he forced the words out even as his eyes rolled back in his head and he shuddered with pleasure.
The siren hummed in appreciation of his reaction. She nipped at him again and Damon's fangs descended. They sliced through his lip and he groaned and pulled himself taunt fighting a losing battle with his control. The sharp taste of his own blood cleared his mind for a moment, but then she rolled her hips again and traced the line of his neck with the tip of her tongue. His vision blurred and then sharpened to precision as he growled and the last of his restraint slipped from his grasp.
Something had to give…
Thrusting back his head, Damon angled it sharply to the left and offered her his neck. "Do it!" He submitted to her and gave up the fight.
He felt the drag of her fangs again and let his eyes slide closed. The bite never came. He heard a high sweet giggle instead and then her lips were dancing around the shell of his ear. "There are only a couple of problems with this whole scenario you have going here, Damon."
Damon frowned and opened his eyes but didn't look to the side. "Katherine?"
Her fangs nipped at his ear hard and she clamped her thighs around his hips tightly enough to hurt. "But Katherine just doesn't do it for you anymore, remember Damon?"
He felt like he was being torn in two. His whole body caught fire at the same time that ice water surged through his veins. This was both heaven and hell. "Elena?" he choked.
"Also," she mused, "this bed doesn't exist anymore, Damon. I trashed it a long time ago." Her voice turned mocking. "Just ask Stefan. It was the newborn rage."
Damon sat up with a gasp. He found himself in an unfamiliar bed. It took him a minute to recognize the random open room he'd settled for the night before. He had no time to really process that or begin to deal with his fucked up psyche and the twisted mix of fantasy and nightmare it had just dealt him, because the door swung open and Stefan came hulking in.
His brother looked weary. He looked beaten but not broken. Damon didn't know how to take that. He did know he had no intention of bringing up a certain young doppelvamp. That subject was better left untouched for both their sakes.
"Good, you're up," Stefan leaned back against the wall beside the doorway and frowned. "We need to talk about Elena."
Damon rolled his eyes. Of course, Stefan would be Stefan.
It turned out Elena had managed to take the mere eight hours he was away from her and multiply the weird in Mystic Falls by about a hundred. Oh and she'd managed to squeeze in breaking up with Stefan and a good five hours sleep. If nothing else, the girl deserved points for style.
"A zombie?" Judgey's eyebrows were furrowed. She stood facing Caroline inside the doorway of the boarding house. The blonde was eagerly relating every detail of her earlier encounter with the less well-preserved undead.
"Totally a zombie," Caroline nodded and her curls bounced.
"Because obviously Mystic Falls hasn't reached its freak quota for the year," Damon said. He carefully kept his eyes away from Elena as she maneuvered her way around her best friends and toward the stairs. She was dragging a suitcase behind her and Damon could only assume she'd finally come to her senses about staying with them.
"Where did you leave the body?" Bonnie asked. "I need to see it."
Caroline frowned. "Okay, number one: Eww. When did my life become 'where did you leave the body'? And number two: There was no body. He like…burned up or something."
"That doesn't make any sense. What do you mean?"
Elena sighed and propped the suitcase against the stairs. "She means he burned up, Bonnie. He made this wailing sound and dove toward us, but when he crossed the salt he burst into flames."
Bonnie bit her lip. "Wait a minute. I need to check something." She walked across the room and picked up one of the books she'd stacked on the table earlier. She flipped through the pages and then stopped to read. After muttering under her breath for a minute, the witch looked back toward Blondie. "What did his eyes look like?"
The bubbly vampire made a face and crossed her arms over her chest. "I wasn't looking at his eyes, Bon. I was a little focused on his neck…or more accurately the lack thereof." Her expression flashed guilt briefly and she threw Elena an apologetic look.
Damon frowned. What was up with that? He forced himself to look at Elena fully for the first time since she'd arrived. On the surface he could see she looked fragile and haunted, but he also recognized the steel in her spine and the fire boiling beneath the surface. Miss Gilbert was pissed.
"They were black," Elena answered Bonnie through gritted teeth, "solid liquid black."
Bonnie held the book up in her left hand and pointed to the page with her right. "It wasn't a zombie. It was a shade."
"A what?" Damon turned to Bonnie and asked. He tried to ignore Elena as she made her way into the parlor and positioned herself beside him. He failed but he tried.
Bonnie heaved a deep sigh and moved to sit on the couch. She placed the book down in front of her. "The salt wouldn't stop a real zombie. It might break down the magic used to reanimate the corpse, but the corpse would remain. There still would have been a body."
"Cut the bullshit magic lesson, Judgey. We turned down our invitations to Hogwarts," Damon said. "What's a shade?"
"It's a phantom," Katherine's lazy drawl sounded from the doorway. She strutted in to join them and placed herself on Damon's other side.
He was flanked on both sides by Petrova: curls, a crimson corset, and black leather pants on his left and silky straight, a blue t-shirt, and skinny jeans on his right.
Flashbacks of his earlier dream had him wincing and trying to edge away from both women. Elena frowned at him concerned, but Katherine just smirked. She tilted her head in his direction. "A shade is a phantom," she repeated herself, "it's a magical manifestation of the fear, pain, and rage of the victim of a violent death."
Bonnie glared at Katherine hard. Damon smirked at the witch. "Don't it just suck when she steals your thunder like that?"
Elena rolled her eyes at his antics and jumped in before Bonnie had the chance to take offense. "So he couldn't have actually hurt us? He was just some kind of…ghost? Another scare tactic?"
Damon could already see her working herself up into another tizzy, grabbing her suitcase, and heading home. Well that shit wasn't going to fly. "Have we forgotten that ghosts have a way of being a pain in the ass in this town? Mason Lockwood hurt me plenty."
"It's not a ghost," Bonnie jumped back in. "It's a magical manifestation. It can hurt you physically and it can't be fought by normal means. It has no physical body. Shades are extremely dark magic and extremely dangerous."
Damon wiggled his eyebrows at Elena. "Told ya."
"Well this one is also extremely gone," Caroline reminded them. "He lit up like a firecracker."
"But if they're willing to cross that line and create one shade, they're willing to create more," Bonnie said.
"And god knows they have their choice of gruesome candidates around here," Caroline reluctantly agreed.
"So what do we do about them?" Elena asked.
Bonnie looked back to the book. "We stick together. We keep up the salt circles and when we leave the protected houses there's a recipe for a potion here. It's supposed to dispel shades. If we can recreate it, everyone can carry it on them."
"I'll help you," Caroline offered. Bonnie smiled her thanks.
Damon scoffed at the plan. "That's defense. I'm offense. We need to find out who's behind this shit."
Bonnie glared at him. "I'm up for suggestions, Damon. We've been putting up with this crap for weeks and it's escalating, but we can't fight what we can't find."
Damon looked to Katherine for help. She frowned thoughtfully. "The darkest magics leave a signature on the cast and a stamp on the caster. When you go that deep, you have to pay a price with your soul." She nodded her head toward Bonnie. "Little Bennett might be able to trace it."
"You tell me what to do and I'll try it," Bonnie said. Then she remembered who she was talking to and added "within reason."
"We might have another option," Stefan came walking around the corner into the room. He took in the formation of the individuals present before focusing on Damon. "Sheriff Forbes called. They're making an arrest in the Lockwood case."
Damon smiled thinking about his friend. "I'll head to the station and check it out." He looked at Stefan. "You coming with?"
"I am," Elena said.
Stefan winced slightly and shook his head. "I'll stay here and work with Katherine and the girls on the witchcraft."
Katherine rolled her eyes. "He'll fit right in."
Damon looked at Elena annoyed. "Don't you want to stay here and play potions?"
Elena smiled. "Not even remotely."
"Fabulous," he headed for the door with Elena right behind him. He was really starting to miss the days when he could just speed away and leave her ass in the dust.
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