Suddenly, she was all alone, somewhere in a little hut in the wilderness of California.
She was looking around to get to know the place, that served Damon as a hideout.
It was different than the boarding house. Less fancy and more practical.
There where no other doors besides the entrance door. Just one big room to live, cook and sleep in. She saw a fireplace; a kitchen area with cupboards full of canned food, preserving jars, pots, and other typical kitchen devices; and a stairway next to a huge wardrobe, that led into a loft.
An old fashioned bathtub with a fire-heating concept right in the middle of the room got her attention.
She was pretty impressed, but also irritated by the missing restroom.
'Don't tell me...?' Elena was opening the entrance door and went outside. 'My god. The toilet is outside?' She never saw nor experienced an outhouse. 'I guess there is a first time for everything' she snickered.
...
Relieved and still smiling about the whole thing, she was on her way back to the hut. Piled up at the outer walls of the den, she found firewood, and a bucket to bring the stuff inside.
She first started the fire in the fireplace, then the one in the kitchen, and finally the one under the tub.
She then worked hard to fill the tub with snow from outside. The image she visualized happily was herself sitting in that tub, losing all the tension in her muscles in the hot water.
Coming out to refill the bucket with snow a last time, she saw him coming back. He wasn't alone. Oddly enough a deer was following him. Not knowing why, she instantly hid herself behind a stump, which was used to chop the wood, she just brought in.
He hadn't noticed her so far and so she was allowed to observe the strange incident.
Elena spotted some kind of dead animal slung over his shoulder. Then, close enough for her to see them in the light of the hut, he turned around to face the deer.
The graceful animal nervously pawed the ground. Damon seemed to compel the creature to relax. She started to think how peaceful the picture was, when Damon attacked the deer's neck out of nowhere. Like the wild beast that he was, he yanked and tored at the skin and the subjacent muscles, till he was satisfied with the incoming flow of blood, holding its head in place with his two hands.
After a minute the dear collapsed on its front hooves. Damon buried his face in the open wound, kneeling next to the dying animal, sucking more and more blood, and pushed the deer little by little to its side. When it was over, a drizzling rain of blood was blown from his lips into the snow with every exhale he did. Warm and sticky, the blood was quite a contrast to the clean and shiny white snow.
Paralyzed, Elena gazed at the red and white pattern in front of her. Her hands and arms were eager to seek shelter back in the hut and reached behind her back, but the rest of her body was too dull to move, yet.
The only thing she managed was to knock over the bucket with a loud clunk.
That woke up both of them. Her bodily alarm system freed her at last from the immobilisation. That on the other hand turned him on...like a cat would be turned on by any tiny fuzzy fast moving object.
She jumped to her feet, but, he already made his move and stood now between her and the cabin door. Without thinking she fled into the semidarkness of a freezing winter night.
Being a predatory stalker, he didn't want to end it just now, by using his super speed.
He just stood there and waited, listening to her heartbeat. Mesmerized by it, he had a smile on his face that would have eaten Mona Lisa's heart out.
After 10 minutes he was left only to hear the sound of the snowflakes falling from the sky.
"Game on!" he rumbled, licking his lips in anticipation.
...
Elena's lungs were burning. 10 minutes of cold air and hard physical exertion contributed to her hopeless situation. She was cold, frightened, and lost; and thought about giving up and calling out for him.
Just a little eternity ago, she told him that she trusted him, that she believed in him. Now she was here, trying to escape him.
'Oh damn...so stupid... I can't even call out for him.' Suddenly a loud metallic click sound and white pain raising up from her ankle made her want to scream. However, she did not. She had her last thought still in mind, about being quiet for a special reason. So somehow she managed what seemed to be impossible, when the animal trap she stepped in, closed around her ankle.
It happened so fast that she startled leaped aside to get away from the pain. But the trap relentlessly clung to her ankle and pulled her out of balance.
Pulling her face out of the snow, she started crying and didn't know what to do.
Unable to stand up and being in immense agony, she was willing to finally give up and call out for help, if had not an eerie noise distracted her.
That noise was created by something huge and unearthly. It reminded her of a tree, about to fall and break, but it in a more glassy sounding way.
'What the hell is that?'