"Salvatore!" Kai exclaims with a haughty smile on his face. "Do I need to ask why you're interrupting my fun?" he asks, taking a strand of Elena's hair in his fingers and bringing it to his nose.

Damon blurs into the elevator, pulls Kai away from her, and shoves him back. "This is between the two of us. What I want to know is why you're here?"

"I heard it through the grapevine that my sissy, Liv, got herself killed, drained of blood from what I read... You wouldn't know anything about that would you?" he asks, pushing the button for the 28th floor.

"Olivia Parker, the third victim," Damon explains, looking at Elena.

"Well, answer the question, Damon. Did you kill my sister?" Kai interjects.

"No!" Damon yells. Then, somewhat calmer, forcing his former cocky tone, "I liked Liv. Now, you on the other hand, you're the one that likes to kill your siblings…"

But Elena is confused. Why hadn't Damon told her that Kai's sister was one of the victims? Why didn't he tell her he knew the girl personally? Did he have something to do with the murders after all? And is this whole thing with Kai just a way to confuse her further and get her off his trail?

Damon must be able to see the doubt on her face. His attention focuses on her, voice desperate. "Elena! Elena, look at me. You gotta believe me. I didn't have anything to do with this." He turns to Kai, "Dammit, Kai! Always gotta play your little games."

"Rough day? Kai sneers before making an aghast expression and turning toward Elena. "So sorry. I seem to have forgotten my manners...I'm Kai. And well, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I'm a sociopath."

Elena splays her fingers over her chest, feigning surprise.

"I know. Shocker, right?" he chuckles. "I like being a sociopath. Not being burdened by things like guilt or love..." Abruptly changing the subject, his eyes dart between Damon and Elena. "How do you two know each other?"

Elena shares a look with Damon, wondering what she's gotten herself into.

Thankfully, Damon answers for them. "I think it's obvious. We met investigating these gruesome murders, Kai. So, convince me. No, convince us. You're a self-admitted sociopath. You don't love. You've already committed a mass murder - of your own family no less - and didn't even care. Why should we believe you had nothing to do with any of it?"

"He's right," Kai shrugs. "I thought I should try to care, I mean. I even googled how to process emotional pain, and they said if you write everything down in a letter and burn it, you'll be healed. So, I started writing, and this water literally started pooling in my eyes. Has that ever happened to you, like-like water just-just oozing out of my eyeballs like I'm some alien creature excreting fluids?"

"You mean you cried?" Elena asks, looking at him incredulously.

"Yes! And after that was done, I burned the letter, and the feelings—oops- they still weren't there. It was an exercise in futility," Kai remarks, sighing melodramatically.

"Try again, Kai. I'm waiting to know why you're in Las Vegas," Damon demands, subtly moving closer to Elena just as the elevator dings.

"No can do...this is my floor," Kai announces and nudges Elena out of the lift with him.

Damon's even more annoyed. "Oh, no. You're not going anywhere 'til you tell me why you're here?" he stipulates, blurring in front of Kai to stop him.

"I might ask you the same thing..." Kai retorts, scrutinizing his adversary.

"I have my reasons..."

"I feel strongly that Luke needs to know how fundamentally sorry I am that Livie croaked- not really, of course, but he doesn't have to know that..." Kai snickers, smiling deviously.

"I'm going to ask you more time. Are you responsible for all these killings?" Damon asks matter-of-factly, looking at Kai, brows drawing together.

"Me? Of the three of us, you're the only one who sucks blood..."

Damon comes toe-to-toe with him, clearly irritated. "This has been a monumentally bad day in a sea of bad days, so I'm going to need to know what you're doing here- the real reason and how it relates to me or I'm gonna rip your throat out."

"Temper's going to get you in trouble; it's going to drive this pretty little lady here away. Then I won't get to have my fun."

"You think my temper's bad? I like her. You, not so much," Damon growls, and lifts Kai by his collar.

"Damon, when are you going to learn that I'm the superior supernatural?" Kai boasts, raising his arm with his hand curling into a claw-like pose.

Damon glares at him for a millisecond before dropping him down. "Answers now!"

"Maybe you should have a drink? That's always calmed you down."

Damon glowers and Kai continues, "Then it makes you angry, followed by sad, before reaching the calm stage again. It's a weird cycle, and look, if you really want to know the reason I'm following you, it's because I want to kill you."

"What else is new? Now, have you been killing women or not?"

"Damon, Damon...If I was killing women, why would I hide it? It's not like you or anyone else can stop me..."

"If I find out you're lying, I'm going to take your head off," Damon retorts, his mouth setting in a hard line.

Kai throws his arm around Elena's neck. "Think of it like this, Elena. This guy turned off his humanity, stopped caring about right and wrong before spending a decade tearing through the Big Apple. How do we know this isn't just an act?"

"That's not how it happened," Damon shoots back.

"I'm sure I missed a detail or two, but I'm just paraphrasing what Damon told me."

Elena considers Damon, not quite sure who to believe right now. "What do you mean turned it off?"

"You mean he didn't tell you?" Kai jests. "A vampire who turns off their humanity becomes impervious to emotions. No more guilt or nagging conscience. They become remorseless, calculating killers. Kind of like me," he chuckles and winks at Elena.

"Don't listen to him. Only one of us is a remorseless killer," Damon snaps, anger thrumming through his veins.

"How do I know you're not turned off? I only just met you, so this-" she says, gesturing between them, "could easily be an act."

"Kai's a psychopath. Don't let him get in your head."

"You know what? You two can sort this out. I'm leaving," Elena announces, jerking free of Kai and slinking around Damon before heading toward the stairs exit, intent to free herself of them both.

"We're not done here," she hears Damon warn Kai. She looks back and watches as Damon stares unblinkingly at his opponent 'til the elevator door slides closed.

She doesn't wait around after that, ducks into the stairwell, desperately needing to get away from this situation. Maybe she can outrun Damon? Maybe Kai won't be waiting for her when she steps out of the stairwell and back into the casino downstairs? But her heart sinks when she hears Damon on the stairs above, and before she can blink, he's standing in front of her.

She holds up a hand. "I need some time, Damon. Just, please, let me go."

There's a moment where she thinks he won't. There's a moment where she wonders if she's going to be the next victim of a heinous monster/serial killer. Will Detective Mikaelson be investigating her death next? How does she get herself into these situations?

Surprisingly, though, Damon steps aside, as if sensing her fear. Still, somehow, she knows he's follows her down the stairs, and she can feel his eyes lingering on her as she walks through the casino and out into the darkness, all the way until she gets to her car.

"Fuck! How could I have been so stupid?" Elena curses herself, pacing around her room and raking her hands through her hair, violently ripping out the rubber band.

She's mad at herself for feeling this way. Her eyes settle on her desk and the empty coffee cup she left this morning. How much does she really know about Damon? What if Kai is right and this is all part of some kind of a master plan?

Seething, she angrily bats the cup off of the end table, sending it flying across the room to land on the carpet. Knowing she won't sleep in this state, she gets out the material for her next podcast.

Slipping the headphones on, she lowers her mouth to the microphone and flips the record button to on.

September 21, 1986, was a warm and beautiful Sunday in Portland- even at 9 p.m., it was still a relatively balmy fifty-eight degrees.

Randy Blighton is traveling west on Highway 26—the Sunset Highway. It's about 8:30, and dark enough that he needs his headlights to see ahead of him on the curvy road. He is startled as he comes around one of those curves because, a half mile ahead, vehicles are suddenly swerving out of their lane. It looks as if there might be something in the road ahead that they aren't able to see until the last moment. Whatever it is, it has to be dangerous.

He travels another hundred feet before he can make out the dark hulk of a van turned crosswise on the freeway. Its lights are off, and it's in a perilous position, completely blocking the left-hand lane. Luckily, the drivers ahead of him have been alert, but it's only a matter of time before someone comes around the curve and smashes into the van. People usually drive the Sunset Highway between fifty-five and sixty-five miles an hour, and a crash like that would undoubtedly escalate rapidly into a fatal, multicar pileup, especially since the route is popular to vacationers heading back to Portland after a weekend away at the coast.

Randy's first inclination is to swerve around the van; he had things to do at home. "I was going to go on by, too," he later recalls, "but then I spotted the silhouette of an infant seat in the van. I couldn't ignore that. I would never be able to live with myself if there was a baby or a little kid in that van."

He taps his brakes, pulls his car over on the right shoulder, grabs a couple of flares, and runs across the freeway toward the van. As he gets close, he can see that it's perpendicular to the median that separates the east and westbound lanes. The vehicle's engine is still turning over, and it's in gear, causing it to inch forward before being repelled by the concrete barriers over and over again.

Mr. Blighton opens the driver's-side door. The van isn't empty. He can make out a figure lying on the front seat. The person's legs are near the gearshift console and extend over the driver's seat. Their back is on the passenger seat, and their head is tucked into their chest and drooping toward the floor. Randy doesn't know if it's a man or woman, but he notices a smallish, loafer-type shoe on one foot that looks feminine.

Elena stops recording when a resounding series of knocks distracts her. Taking off her ear phones, she gets up just as the doorbell cuts shrilly through her house.

"Chill, I'm coming," she yells. Looking through the peep hole, she feels her temper rising again. She swings open the door causing a stunned Damon to stumble and nearly do a faceplant.

"Seriously?!" he comments as she slams the door closed behind him.

"Seriously what?" she spits out, moving to stand nose-to-nose with him, an angry finger poking him in the chest. "You set me up, asshole."

"Elena!" he protests, "That's not true. I wouldn't have let anything happen to you. I was in the elevator as soon as you stepped inside with him."

"What is Kai?"

"He's a warlock. Well, a magic-siphoner really, but after killing almost his whole coven, he has magic without needing to drain another supernatural being."

"What do you mean a siphoner?"

"Do you know anything about the X-men?" Damon asks out of the blue.

"What do they have to do with this?" she blurts out in frustration.

"Rogue is one of the characters. When she touches someone, she absorbs their power, their life force. That's what Kai is able to do," Damon explains.

"So now there's witches and vampires? What else are you keeping from me?" she counters, her eyes are nearly slits as she glares at him.

Damon grabs her chin between his thumb and forefinger, keeping their gazes locked. "I'll tell you everything you want to know," he says softly, letting go to cup her cheek.

"This nice act...is any of it real? And how am I supposed to know if your emotions are on or off?"

When she pulls back, Damon lets go, rakes his hand through his hair in frustration, and begins to pace the length of the porch.

Abruptly, he stops in his tracks and turns around. "No! No, you know what?" Damon counters, latching onto her arm and pulling her in front of him. "If I had my emotions turned off, believe me, you'd know it."

And with that, Damon's mouth is hot on hers as his hands grab her waist, pulling her close. She's pressed right up against him, neither of them breaking away even as the kiss gains momentum. She's moaning into his mouth, and it's just about the best sound he's ever heard. Her tongue is playing against his, moving and sucking, then licking his lips and diving back in.

She is bourbon, salt, and chocolate, and it's better than any blood he's ever had. His hands move to her back, slip under her shirt, and slide against her bare skin.

Elena gasps against his mouth, and things are going to get out of hand if she keeps this up. Reluctantly, she steps back.

He feels the loss of her immediately... "Elena, I...I," he starts, his voice is rough, and his breathing uneven as he brushes a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I don't know what to believe," Elena interrupts and takes another step back, putting distance between them. "How can I know that you didn't use that mind trick to make me like you?"

Damon stares at her in disbelief for several seconds before replying. "I don't need to compel women to like me. I'm a charming sort of fellow. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I agree you're something..." Elena shoots back, raking her eyes over his form.

Damon flashes a roguish grin at her. He wants her more than he's ever wanted anyone, but he also knows that she needs to be the one to initiate it.

"Elena," Damon starts again.

She freezes with one hand on the doorknob.

"I'm sorry about tonight. I really am," Damon says. He can tell by her reaction that the words surprise her as much as they do him, but he carries on. His eyes hold steady on hers. "I shouldn't have asked you to run interference with Kai," he admits, giving her a crooked smile while his eyes stay sober. "I think I was just looking for an excuse to spend more time with you..."

I appreciate the apology," Elena replies, not responding to his last remark. Their eyes lock for several seconds before he turns on his heels and walks out through the now open door.

"Goodnight, Damon," he hears her say softly just before the door closes behind him.

Elena steps over to the window, pulling the curtain back slightly, watching as Damon slides into his car. She has the weirdest thought that she doesn't actually want him to go. Shaking her head to dislodge the confusion from her mind, Elena drops the curtain and returns to her office.

It takes her a few minutes to get into the right mindset to continue her podcast. After taking a long swallow of water, she puts her headphone back on and flips the switch up to start recording.

There was no time for Blighton to try to figure out who the driver was, or how he—or she—had ended up crosswise on the freeway. He stepped up into the driver's side, pushing the legs out of the way as much as he could. Now he could see that there was a woman's purse jammed between the accelerator and the firewall. That would explain why the van continued to move forward. Blighton felt along the dash to try to find the switch for the emergency flashers but he couldn't locate it; he didn't know that it was overhead.

There was the child's carseat right behind the driver's seat. It was empty, but that didn't make Blighton feel much better; the baby could be on the floor. Counting on the flares to warn other cars to avoid the van, he slid the side passenger door open and patted the floor and seats with his hands. Everything he touched was wet and he realized why it had been so hard to see through the driver's-side window. Something dark was splattered on the glass. On some level, he knew he was running his hands through pooled blood, but finding the baby was his priority. When he found nothing, he ran to the back of the van, opened the hatchback, and looked in. No baby, thank Christ.

Instinctively, Blighton wiped his palms down his shirt and pants, wanting to get the wet, sweet iodine-like, metallic-smelling substance off of his hands. At the time, he didn't stop to consider how it could be blood if the van had not been hit by another vehicle. He ran back to the driver's door, hopped into the van, expertly shifted into reverse, and backed the van across the freeway and onto the shoulder of 79th where it met the Sunset Highway.

Only when he had assured himself that the Toyota was no longer in danger of being hit by oncoming traffic did Blighton turn to look closely at the person lying across the seat. He thought it was a woman. Her hair was short and dark, but he didn't know if she was young or old. She did not respond to his questions, but he still kept asking, "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Blighton ran around to the front passenger door and found it was slightly ajar. He opened it and picked up the woman's hand, feeling for a pulse in her wrist. There was no reassuring beat. He could see blood on her face, and one of her eyes protruded grotesquely, as big as a hard-boiled egg. Even if he had known this woman, he would never have recognized her.

His first thought was that he had to get help for her; maybe she did have a pulse but too faint for him to detect. He ran back to the driver's side and reached in, running his hands along the dash, searching frantically again for the emergency flashers switch. He finally saw it overhead and switched them on. They clicked in an eerie rhythm, but that was the only sound he heard.

The woman wasn't breathing.

Elena pauses to take a swallow of water and use the bathroom. After detailing more of the story, she begins to wrap it up.

To recap, Cheryl Keeton's body was discovered in her Toyota van on the Sunset Highway near Portland on Sept. 21, 1986. Police quickly determined that Keeton, a prominent attorney, had died not in a traffic accident but from massive head wounds inflicted by a blunt object. Her estranged husband - from whom she was locked in a bitter custody battle over their three young sons - immediately became a suspect. But police had no physical evidence and no witnesses and were unable to arrest Brad Cunningham.

Keeton, who had feared for her life, left behind an incriminating note: That she had gone to meet Cunningham at an abandoned gasoline station to pick up her boys. She was never seen alive again.

Women flocked to Brad Cunningham like he was their knight in shining armor.

He was attractive, successful, charming.

He was also a sociopath and a killer.

Cunningham had gone through five wives and fathered six children by the time he was 46. It took eight years for Cunningham to be brought to criminal trial. A wife-beater who alternately inflicted physical and emotional abuse, he sucked women in with his initial devotion and charisma. But he soon revealed his true colors. Keeton was more determined than any of his wives to let the world know the man behind the curtain.

She paid with her life.

As investigators looked into Cunningham's background, they found enough evidence to justify a civil suit, and a jury found him liable for Keeton's death. Encouraged by the civil award, prosecutors charged Cunningham criminally. Ever the egomaniac, he represented himself during his trial.

Cunningham was sentenced to life with a minimum 22-year term, but the state Parole Board told him in 1996 that he never would be released from prison. In 2005, the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld his conviction.

Elena ends the recording and removes her headphones. Sometimes, these cases are grueling to recount, even if they do help keep her mind occupied from the macabre case, she, herself, seems to be embroiled in.

When she falls into bed, her thoughts all coalesce around Damon. His kisses are like soft rain on a summer evening; like an explosion of the best flavors in the universe all at once mingling together and creating the best taste and sensation she's ever felt...

Her fingertips drift to her lips just as her eyes fall closed.

Apologies for the lateness. Worked last night, ran all day and went to Dr. with my husband, who's disabled.

Humungous thanks to all of you, and those of you whose reviews I cannot respond to. The DE fandom isn't what it was in its prime but it's not dead either.

Massive thanks to jmfangs-she's brilliant and to Eva who's also brilliant. Make sure to check out their stories.

The book detailing Cheryl Keeton's story is called 'Dead by Sunset' by Ann Rule. There is a TV movie- same title- starring Annette O'Toole and Ken Olin.

Chapter title: 'Spark in the Dark' by Alice Cooper.

Have a wonderful evening and sweet DE dreams.