Chapter 14: Hellraiser

DAMON

Matt's truck is unlocked, thankfully for his door, and I have it hot-wired in seconds. I see Jeremy running across the parking lot but I don't have time to wait. I drive straight over the curb and into the street.

"Who is there? Are you hurt? What happened?" I ask tightly, but Elena just groans. I hit speaker and toss the phone onto the seat so I can hear her and drive at the same time. She's making little panting noises punctuated by sharp cries, like she's trying to pull something out of a wound and it hurts like hell. An arrow? A stake?

I go through a busy intersection, tires screaming as I weave around three cars going two different directions, missing the last one by inches. I pull up in front of the Gilbert house less than two minutes after my phone rang. Elena's laying in the front yard and there's a crater in the ground in front of her porch steps. I don't see anybody else but I'm on guard.

I hit my knees next to her, rolling her onto her back and taking my first breath when I realize there's not a stake near her heart.

"Where are they?" I hiss.

"There's no one here," she pants. "The ground just... blew up."

She's bleeding from so many different places I don't even know what the fuck happened.

"Shrapnel?" I ask her. "Wood or metal?"

She grits her teeth, writhing against the pain. "I don't know."

I pick up her phone off the ground, thanking God that I had the foresight to put my new number into it this morning while she slept. Because yeah, why would the attempts on her life stop long enough for us to get around to things like trading phone numbers?

I call my brother and eye the house suspiciously, tossing rocks from the flower beds onto the steps and the porch. Nothing blows up.

"Hi Elena," Stefan says. "What's up?"

"Fucking hunter booby traps are up," I snap. "Get over to Gilbert Central and watch yourself. There's somebody out here watching us and you need to catch them while I'm on first aid duty."

"Who's hurt?" he asks. Through the phone, I hear the front door of the boarding house slam. Good man.

I break a branch off the tree in the front yard and stalk up the stairs, turning the doorknob carefully and nudging it just enough to make the latch stay open. Then I back off a few steps and use the branch to push the door. It swings open without incident, but then two darts bury themselves in the door where I should be standing.

Crouching low, I check the rest of the foyer and the living room for booby traps. When I don't find any I blur around the house, scared as fuck that I'm going to go back out front and find Elena gone.

Instead when I make it back through the door I see her trying to get to her feet, her face twisted with pain and smeared with blood. I gather her up into my arms as carefully as I can but she still cries out.

"Easy, sweetheart. I'm going to fix it," I promise her. "It's only going to hurt for another minute and then you'll heal right up and I'll kill that booby trapping motherfucker at least twice."

I kick the vase of flowers off the dining room table and lay her out on its hard surface, sprinting off to get first aid supplies.

When I return I smooth her hair back from her face, murmuring whatever I can think of to her in a voice that I hope is soothing. For all I know, I'm quoting baseball statistics. I hope I'm not quoting Hustler.

Her eyes are undamaged but there is a nasty cut across her forehead and a piece of metal sticking out the side of her nose. I pull it free, letting the blood run unchecked. I hiss and drop the piece of metal as it burns my fingers.

"Vervain," I whisper, horrified. God, she's riddled with vervain-soaked nails. I grab the next nail and rip it out, cursing as it takes pieces of my burning flesh with it.

Stefan comes through the front door and hurries to my side.

"Jesus," he swears softly. "Damon, those are covered with vervain. Don't touch them." He starts rummaging through the first aid kit and then shoves a set of latex gloves at me. I've gotten five nails out, but my hands are so blistered I can barely curl my fingers. Stefan takes my hands and pulls the gloves on for me as the skin starts to heal.

"Call Meredith. Get her here ten minutes ago," I order.

I pull away and flex my fingers experimentally. They'll do. "And clear the fucking neighborhood. They're out there still, I know they are. Those fuckers wanted to watch her writhe and I bet they stuck around to see who would come to help."

"Wait, why do we need Meredith? Can't you just pull the pieces out yourself?"

I don't care if she's a vampire, I want a fucking doctor.

"Is there a reason you're still here, Stefan?" I snap. His lips tighten, but he heads for the door.

Elena whimpers and I rip her shirt open. She jerks in pain so I grab scissors to cut the rest off more carefully. I take tweezers to the wounds by her heart first but thank fuck, nothing seems to have gone that deep. It wouldn't kill her since it is metal instead of wood but it would hurt like being burned from the inside out.

She tries to stifle a scream as I dig the tweezers into her chest. Man, I can't take that sound.

I meet her agonized brown eyes.

"Forgive me," I tell her, and I snap her neck.

When she goes limp I take a deep breath and blow it out. My phone is still in Matt's truck so I use Elena's again, speed-dialing Caroline and hitting the speaker button.

"Hey, is something wrong?" she says without pre-amble. "Damon just stole Matt's truck and Jeremy doesn't know where he went but he says-"

I cut her off. "Elena's hurt. I need a human for her to feed on, now. Or two, if you want them both to still be walking around tomorrow."

This is just like the booby trap Connor built at the Grill. He hasn't gone poltergeist on us, has he? Why can't anybody just fucking die around here?

"I'll be there in five minutes," Caroline says and hangs up.

I concentrate on removing nails from Elena. None are embedded particularly deep but there are so many. After one rolls across the table-top and sizzles against her flesh I grab a fruit bowl, dump it unceremoniously on the floor and start collecting nails in it so they can't get away. The gloves and tweezers seem to be protecting me well enough but I'm glad as hell to see Meredith come steaming through the door with her suitcase-sized doctor bag.

"I brought blood, too," she tells me, sizing up the situation with one comprehensive look before taking another set of tweezers out of her bag.

"Won't help her," I say tersely. "Don't worry, I've got that covered but if she wakes up you better back off cause she's going to wake up hungry."

Elena's head turns on its own as her neck starts to heal back into place.

"Hurry," I tell Meredith, dropping my tweezers and going to work cutting off Elena's jeans.

She's faster at it than I am. I guess a hundred grand's worth of med school is good for something, even when it is as basic as nail removal.

"I can't find anyone," Stefan says, shutting the front door behind him. "Did you see the vervain darts in the door?"

"Get out," I snarl. Elena's lying mostly naked and bloody on the table and I don't want him looking at her. Never mind that he's seen her naked far more times than I have because my hold on my temper is nonexistent right now.

"Don't be stupid, Damon," Meredith says, looking irritated and a little confused. She's probably not up to date on our Jerry Springer-ish, ever-changing ménage a trois. "He can help."

Elena stirs and I know when she smells Meredith because her muscles tense and the veins extend sluggishly from her eyes. I grab her shoulders and hold her to the table. She struggles, snarling blindly at me.

"Elena, don't! You're hurt, she's helping you."

She stops, her head turning toward me and then she slumps back onto the table, her face moving in and out of her vampire aspect as if she can't decide what she is.

"Damon?"

"I'm right here. I need you to hold still, okay?"

Her eyes are glassy and unfocused. Sweat breaks out on her skin as I watch.

"What was on those nails?" Stefan asks, horrified.

"Vervain. Maybe something else, I don't know."

"Damon I'm hungry," she whispers. "Don't tell."

"I'll take care of it. Don't worry. You're okay."

"Did I... did I kill someone?" she asks, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She's shifting, squirming mindlessly as if she's not totally in control of her body.

"No, you didn't. Everything is fine, just rest. I'm going to make it stop hurting." It's harder to work now, because she keeps moving. Meredith's still game, holding Elena's leg with one hand while she works with the other.

Elena moans and then says something that doesn't totally sound like words.

"What?"

She huffs out another string of gibberish and I shoot a helpless look at my brother.

"She's got a lot of vervain in her system," he says, grabbing a pair of gloves out of Meredith's bag. "Do we have more tweezers?"

"I've never seen vervain do that," I tell him.

Elena screams, her back bowing. Her arms shoot off the table, her hands clawing at the air in a weird, jerky way. Meredith leaps out of the way.

"Hold her!" she shouts.

I try to pin Elena's arms but she's all over the place. I've never seen anybody move like that. It's involuntary like a seizure but more coordinated. Her muscles are weirdly stiff.

"I don't know if its vervain," I tell Stefan. "It burned me, so I thought it was but this-" I break off as she lurches toward the edge of the table.

"Can we knock her out?" Stefan asks, grabbing her ankles and trying to help me hold her down.

"I don't want to give her vervain and I already snapped her neck once. I don't want to do anything else to her until we get some blood in her system. She needs to be able to heal," I tell him frantically.

I climb onto the table and pull her back against my chest, crossing her arms across her chest and bear-hugging her. She's still convulsing a little but with Stefan holding her legs we can keep her mostly still.

Her head snaps up, zeroing in on Stefan holding her ankles and she screams. "No, no, no!" and then descends back into gibberish. Stefan's grip falters, his face set in horrified, guilty lines.

"She doesn't know you," I tell him. "She might be hallucinating again. She hasn't been seeing anything since I left, has she?"

"Not since Jeremy killed that hybrid," Stefan says, shifting his grip so Meredith can reach the last of the nails.

"Can you turn her a little?" Meredith asks.

Elena starts to cry.

"Elena, it's okay," Stefan says in a low voice. "I know it hurts but we're almost done. Just wait and you'll heal."

She shakes with sobs, not responding to his voice.

Stefan and I manage to wrestle her onto her side and Meredith picks out a couple more nails but Elena's front seems to have gotten the worst of it. My stomach flips over at the sight of the bowl full of nails and shrapnel. There are so many.

The door opens and Caroline, Matt and Jeremy hurry inside with Kyle the bartender walking slowly behind them.

They're all talking at once and all I hear is meaningless noise. I free one hand to brush Elena's hair back from her face. Her eyes are squeezed shut and her lips are moving but no sounds are coming out.

"I don't understand why it had to be Kyle. He just moved here and he's a cool guy and it isn't fair," Jeremy's saying.

"None of this is fair," Caroline snaps, zipping into the living room and coming back with a throw blanket. "Do you think April Young getting attacked at her father's funeral was fair? I didn't have that many choices, okay? And Elena's not going to want to hear that she drank from you." She tucks the blanket around Elena.

"Thank you," I tell Caroline without a trace of sarcasm. I keep thinking about Elena last night, blushing about taking a bath with me in her underwear and how much she'd hate knowing this whole houseful of people would see her nearly naked.

Matt's coming forward, wrist extended. "She can feed from me," he offers. "What happened?"

"Careful, Matt." Stefan catches his arm before he gets too close. "She's not herself. There was a booby trap that blew up a bunch of nails at her, and we think there was some kind of poison on them."

I knock Stefan's hand away and grab Matt, dragging him closer. She needs blood and she needs it now. If mine would work, I'd already be bone dry.

She doesn't respond, instead going totally limp and mumbling things that sound like names. I can't quite catch whose.

I bite Matt's wrist myself and he flinches, not ready for that.

"Sorry," Stefan says, as if he did it.

That does the trick. Elena's body goes tense and I have to hold her with both arms as she strikes Matt's bleeding wrist, tearing it open.

He yells in pain and I see Kyle flinch. Apparently reflexes still work through whatever compulsion Caroline hammered him with to make him so zombie-fied.

"It's okay, Matt," I tell him tensely. "Relax and it won't hurt so much." I wrap Elena up tightly with one arm and nip open my own wrist, holding it out to Matt.

"Drink now. She's delirious. She bit too hard."

Kyle is standing still again, his gaze on us but unfocused and not really registering the ER-meets-True-Blood style drama.

Matt takes two reluctant swallows and then pulls back, wiping his face on the shoulder of his uniform shirt. "Man, I never thought I'd have to drink so much damn vampire blood in my life."

"Don't tell her," I ask him, trying to keep the pleading out of my voice. I'll compel him if I have to but he's probably on vervain and I'd have to detox him first. "Don't tell her she did that. It'll break her heart."

Matt nods. "I know. I'm cool. Who set the booby trap?"

"A hunter," Jeremy says. I glance sharply at him. "It's the same trap Connor used," he reminds me.

"So does that mean it is werewolf venom doing this?" Caroline asks, her voice climbing half an octave.

"No," Stefan says decisively. "Werewolf venom causes blistering and oozing around the wounds. We'd have noticed."

"Elena, that's enough. Stop," I tell her, just in case she can hear me.

No response.

"We're going to have to do this the hard way." I say grimly. "Caroline, hold her."

Caroline grabs Elena's wrists and I stick my fingers into her mouth without ceremony, prying her teeth apart. Elena howls and snaps at me, totally gone on bloodlust and whatever poison is wrecking her.

Matt pulls his wrist back once her teeth release him and he cradles his arm to his chest, grimacing at the pain. "Shit, it hurt that time."

I shake my hand, bloody where she bit me. The wounds close while I watch.

"Yeah well, rabid vampires are a little lacking on table manners," I tell him. "Is it healing?"

He nods, watching Elena. "Will that fix her?"

"It will help her heal. That should be enough," I tell him, wishing I believed it.

Elena's convulsing against me and the table is a mess of people, Caroline and Stefan and I all wrapped up around Elena in a chaotic clutter of arms and legs. I close my eyes for an instant, wishing fervently that I could go back to last night, kissing Elena on the floor in front of the fireplace.

"Get that damn bartender, Jeremy."

Elena's brother is staring at Kyle, his shoulders tight. He doesn't move.

"We don't have time for teen angst, emo-boy," I say through my teeth.

Caroline transfers Elena's wrists back to me and goes to retrieve Kyle, leading him by the hand to Elena. He doesn't resist and he doesn't seem to see anything going on around him.

"Did you compel him or brainwash him, Blondie? He's fully Walking Dead here."

Elena's back bows unnaturally against me and her head smacks painfully into my chin.

"You told me to hurry," Caroline protests.

"Quick," Stefan says anxiously. "She needs blood."

Caroline picks Kyle's hand up and holds it in front of Elena, who scents the blood and attacks. I leave Kyle to her and wrestle her hands back down because I have no idea how much she's thinking right now, if at all.

Kyle face contorts with pain but stays blank and kind of vague. It's creepy. I guess I've never looked at somebody's face when they're compelled and being fed on. Probably because I'm usually doing the feeding instead of playing straightjacket for a girl who may or may not be my girlfriend and may or may not be totally psychotic from some kind of vampire hunter poison.

This is more like the homecoming I had expected, actually.

Elena suddenly goes limp, Kyle's wrist falling away from her mouth. Caroline catches his hand before he can drip on the rug and slices open her wrist on a fang before gently pressing the cut to Kyle's unresisting mouth.

I push Elena's hair back from her face, but her skin looks normal. No blistering, none of the grey veins that come with death.

"Okay Super Doc, diagnosis. Please," I bark.

I'm about one breath away from going apeshit and there's nobody here that I really want to kill. Not my preferred state of affairs.

"I don't know!" Meredith protests, checking Elena's pulse. "She's breathing and she has a faint pulse but I don't really know anything about vampire vital signs. This doesn't look like a vervain overdose or werewolf venom."

"She's not on fire, hasn't been staked and her head is still attached," I finish the list of possible causes of death for an immortal creature. "Sounds like witchy woo woo stuff to me. Where the hell is Glinda?"

"She's been working with Professor Shane but she only has bits and pieces of her magic back," Caroline says anxiously. "I can call her."

"I can take her blood," Meredith offers. "If you give me a control sample to compare it to, I can run some tests on both of them and do a toxicology panel. It could turn up something."

I grind my teeth. "Fine."

I pick Elena up, tucking the blanket more closely around her. Once she's comfortably ensconced on the couch, Meredith takes blood from Elena, Caroline and me.

With that done, we're all just waiting. Elena hasn't so much as twitched since she dropped Kyle's wrist. Caroline takes one look at my expression and starts playing dance committee chairperson.

"Matt, take that bowl of nails to Bonnie's house on your way back to the Grill. See if she can figure anything out about it. Take Kyle with you, too. Jeremy, if your boss finds out you closed the Grill call me and I'll um, talk him into calling it a lunch break," she says, smiling brightly.

"I want to take a closer look around outside. I found some broken twigs and fresh leaves below a tree in a yard two houses down," Stefan says. "I think that's where the hunter was watching from. I want to try to track them."

"Nice," Caroline says approvingly. "That's very CSI of you."

"Thanks for coming through for Elena," Stefan returns. "And Matt, thanks for volunteering. Again. I know she wishes more than anything that she could use blood bags."

"Great. Let's all have a group hug to close our sharing circle, shall we?" I smile insincerely. "Clear out. Let her sleep."

Meredith snaps her bag shut. "Call me if I can help."

"Glad you make house calls, Doc," I drawl, trying to recover the part of me that remembers how to be casual.

"Damon-" Jeremy says, looking at me like Elena used to when she was trying to convince me to feel all the time.

"Back to work, kiddo. Somebody has to teach you the value of good old fashioned hard work."

Stefan puts his hand on Jeremy's shoulder and squeezes but Jeremy pulls away, shoots me one more Basset Hound look and heads out the door.

"What's your new phone number?" Caroline asks me.

"1-800-Dial-A-Date. In case you didn't notice, Blondie, your best friend just finished doing a Hellraiser impression. Now isn't the time."

"We need to be able to contact you," she says firmly, "and vice versa. Remember half an hour ago, when you were calling me for help? What would you have done if you didn't have Elena's phone?"

"Eaten the neighbors?" I smile sharply without looking away from Elena, smoothing her hair away from her face.

It sticks to her cheek with dried blood and my stomach howls a protest. Her face should have other people's blood on it, not her own. She's the predator, not the prey. What kind of supernatural being am I going to have to turn her into to keep her safe?

"When was the last time you ate, Damon?" Caroline persists.

I toss her a glare. "I'm fine, Mom. Thanks for the snacks. Go home."

Everyone else is gone, even my annoying Eeyore-eyed brother and I couldn't be happier. Less people for me to try not to kill.

She crosses her arms. I hate it when she does that. It means she's about to be a bitch.

"No. I'm going to stay and take care of Elena."

"I'll take care of Elena," I bristle.

"No. You won't." Caroline says. "You're just going to have to wait to see her naked until she's conscious, Damon Salvatore. She wouldn't want you to and you know it. She'd be embarrassed."

"Who the hell do you think took care of her after I pulled her out of the river? Or after I rescued her from the hospital, when Klaus tried to make her a blood factory? Or after my brother tried to goddamn eat her? Or I know, how about the time he tried to drive her off a bridge?" I shout, my eyes burning into her. I'm dying for a fight and Caroline is too young to take me. She shouldn't push me right now. "That's what I do, Caroline."

"I know," she says, unruffled by my outburst. "And you do a good job. You may be a jerk, but when Elena needs you, you're always there."

I open my mouth to blast her again, but then I can't remember what I was going to say, so I press my lips together and look back at Elena.

"But I'm her friend and I will take care of her," Caroline tells me firmly.

Matt pokes his head back in the door. "Found a phone on my seat." He tosses it to Caroline. "See you later. Hope she feels better."

I jerk a nod at him.

Caroline hands me my phone and hers and fixes me with one of her sincere looks. The kind that makes me feel like breaking something just to be contrary.

"You're going to program your phone with everybody's number, finish those blood bags that Meredith left and calm down. Because Elena needs you. We all need you, so you can't get all freaky and bitchy right now, okay? You need to figure out these vampire hunters and to do that, you have to take care of yourself."

She puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'll get her cleaned up and then you can sit with her if you want, okay?"

I shrug her hand off. "If she wakes up and goes all epileptic-psycho on you in the bathtub, don't blame me. Most household accidents happen in the bathroom, you know."

I stalk off toward the garage to see if Ric stashed any booze out there. Behind the extra oil and lawnmower gas was always a favorite of his. The way I'm feeling, I'll be lucky if I can tell the difference.