After Brandon headed back to the bright lights and constant hum of the crowd, they followed. Without fanfare, Damon selected a pretty little brunette. A few whispered words drew her away from her friends and into a darkened corner. Elena drifted after them. Damon pulled the girl flush against his body and sank his fangs into her neck without warning. She cried out once, pleasure as much as pain, but the cry was lost in the thump of music and the babble of voices. Damon never took his eyes from Elena as the girl jerked and thrashed in his arms. Once, Elena would have been jealous at the way Damon's arms wrapped around the young woman, the way her body ground against his, but those blue eyes made it clear there was only one woman on his mind.
Healing the girl and compelling her took only a moment, and then they were back in the Camaro and whizzing north on I-81. Silence reigned. Elena had far too many thoughts to even begin to put them into words, and Damon respected her need for quiet.
Everything was upside down and inside out and backward. Elena had just drunk blood from an unwilling donor, compelled him and sent him on his anemic way. She'd watched Damon do the same, and had thought only of how much she longed to join him, latch onto the girl's neck and, together, drain her until her veins collapsed on themselves and her skin turned to milky white, then to make love as the light faded from the girl's eyes. Any one of those experiences should have sent her into paroxysms of guilt.
"How do you know if the switch is off?" she asked. The worst of it was that she didn't feel guilty. Ironically, her lack of remorse over what they'd—she'd-done to Brandon made her miserable. She should feel bad. She should care. The old Elena would have cared. The old Elena wouldn't have done it at all. But what had she really done? The boy wouldn't remember a thing. With vampire blood coursing through his veins, he was probably healthier today than he'd been yesterday. And he had a new lease on life, a new drive to accomplish his goals and be someone. In return, he'd endured a flash of fear and a split second of pain. Was that really so wrong?
It would have been a different story if she'd given in to that dark urge to take and take until only empty vessels remained. Elena knew there were lines she was not willing to cross—not now, not ever. But to take only what she needed, to do as little harm as possible, to send these people on their way as good, if not better, than she'd found them...
No. She was attacking them, stealing from them. It was unequivocally wrong. Maybe she'd somehow flipped the switch out of self-preservation during her meltdown in the bedroom. Maybe that was why the guilt wouldn't come now, no matter how hard she tried to feel it, searched for it deep in the recesses of her heart. There was still all the usual guilt there, perhaps even stronger than usual—hurting Stefan, sending Jeremy away, her crumbled friendship with Bonnie and a thousand other transgressions. But for this? Not a shred.
"If you have to ask, it isn't," Damon replied.
"Oh." That was a relief, she supposed. She needed to feel, needed to remember everything. But everything was dreamlike and unreal, yet so vital and true at the same time. Nothing made sense. Maybe she was just tired. It had been a long day, after all—being attacked by Ric, being attacked by Sage, dying, turning, confronting Stefan, her first hunt. Maybe the strange lack of sentiment toward Brandon could be laid at the feet of exhaustion. Somehow, she doubted it.
"You doing okay?" He rested his hand on her knee, a gesture of wordless comfort.
"I shouldn't be okay. But I think I am." She leaned across the center console, head resting against his shoulder. "Does that make me a bad person?"
He chuckled, rich and low. "Hardly. You spent too much time with my brother, Elena. Only the two of you would feel guilty for not feeling guilty."
Elena couldn't help but laugh. "Poor Stefan."
"Poor Stefan my ass. Please tell me you aren't going to turn all mopey on me. I don't insist on complete hedonism—though man, would that be fun—but I do ask that you don't start brooding. Besides, it'll give you wrinkles." He furrowed his brow by way of demonstration.
"Doesn't suit you," she said.
"You're telling me, honey. But Elena, however you feel about this? It isn't wrong. Whatever you're feeling is exactly the right thing to feel. For you. I know how I feel about it, but that isn't really important right now." He took the exit for Mystic Falls.
"Of course it is. What do you feel about it?" she asked, curious.
"Besides the fact that it was the single hottest thing I've ever seen and my balls may have exploded at one point?" He grinned at her, and she pursed her lips, waiting for him to be serious. She wasn't going to let him get away with that glib response, true as it may be. He sighed and ran his hands along the steering wheel as he searched for the right words.
"I felt-God, I hate that fucking word. I'm not supposed to feel anything," he muttered. "But you throw the rulebook out the window, I guess. Seeing you back there, for the first time, you looked...free." He considered that, then nodded. "Yeah. Free."
"Huh?" Whatever she'd expected him to say, that wasn't it.
"You always hold back. And I mean, it makes sense. You can't go all in when you expect everyone around you to die horribly. Defense mechanism. I get it. I spent a hundred years getting it. But tonight, you weren't holding anything back. Not from yourself, not from me, not even from little Brandon. You weren't thinking, you just were. It was good to see you let go, to see those parts you've tried to hide from everyone." A beat. "So there's my pussy answer. But the sexy thing is still true. It was very sexy."
The Camaro hugged the curves of the road, live oaks with their draperies of Spanish moss encroaching on their path, sweeping branches dipping low overhead.
There had been a time when Elena had been free. Or she'd pretended to be, anyway, ignoring the darkest parts of her to play the part of the carefree cheerleader. It had been a facade, but a good one. One even she'd believed. After the accident, it had gotten even worse as she'd she'd erected careful defenses around herself, locking more and more of herself away. It was the only way to survive, the only way to keep from succumbing to despair. If you kept people at arm's length, then the pain of losing them would be just as distant. Damon had breached nearly every wall she'd built, but through it all, Elena had clung to her inner sanctum, concealing parts of her she hadn't even wanted to admit existed. It was exhausting. But death changed everything. There was nothing to lose. No need to hide. No need for pretense. Tonight, the last walls had crumbled. There was nothing to hold back, not even the wild, animal parts of herself, the parts that weren't good and sweet and kind and forgiving. Damon had seen those hidden places for the first time, and he hadn't flinched away. Perhaps neither should she.
Elena shook out of her reverie. "Astute observation, Mr. Salvatore."
"I've got more astute observations than I know what to do with. Oh, I've got something for you, too." They drew up to the boarding house and he shifted into park. Squirming to one side, he dug into his pocket and produced a simple silver ring, traces of a delicate vine etching peeking out through the heavy tarnish.
Elena recoiled. "That's Sage's ring." She hadn't seen him pry the ring from Sage's cold, shriveled finger, but there was no doubt where it had come from.
"This is Sage's day walking ring." Damon pointed to the east, where the tiniest rim of pale blue on the horizon heralded the dawn. "Since neither of us are on speaking terms with the only witch in town, this will have to work for now. It beats bursting into flames."
Elena's skin crawled. Not just because the ring had come from a corpse, but because the ring had come from Sage. She slid the ring onto the ring finger of her right hand. The ring was cold. Elena hated it. But now wasn't the time to be picky.
"When this is over, I'll get you something new. Maybe a belly button ring. That'd be classy," Damon said as they climbed out of the car. "But for right now, we probably should be hunting for the stake. Or formulating a plan B. Or something. Because now that I've got you, I don't intend to let you get away because your ancestors were Council-hating dicks."
A bucket of ice water dashed the feeble happiness she'd kindled. Of course. How could she forget? It was the reason she'd turned, after all. But she'd been self-absorbed and stupid. They had to find the stake. "The stake. Yeah. Nothing else matters but that." She glanced down at her hoodie, dotted here and there with the rusty remains of her dinner. "Just let me change clothes and we'll go find Ric and Stefan."
"No rush. I want to look through some books. See if I can get a clue about who turned Rose. I mean, we still have two stakes. No reason two Originals can't go down, if we can figure out how not to kill ourselves in the process." They stepped onto the front porch. Damon started to unlock the door, but Elena stepped in front of the keyhole.
"But if you kill two Originals, every vampire they created will die," she said.
Damon blinked. "So? What's your point?"
"That's...that's genocide, Damon." No one wanted Rebekah and Klaus dead more than she did. No one. But there were other vampires out there like her. Like Damon. Like Caroline and Stefan. Vampires who managed to be more-or-less good people. Who were they do snuff them out in a moment just to save their own skins?
"They're already dead. And you don't know them anyway, so who cares? There's only one bloodline that matters, and that's ours. It saves you, me, Stefan and Caroline. Everyone else can go to hell." Damon seemed baffled that Elena would give those anonymous vampires a second thought.
Elena shook her head. "Let's just find the other stake, then we can worry about what we're going to do with it." She stepped aside to let him unlock the door, but he hesitated, giving her a measuring look.
"There isn't some fucking fraternal brotherhood of vampires, Elena. Don't fool yourself. Anyone outside our happy little vampire commune would kill you out without a second thought," he said, pushing the door open.
"I'm not most vampires, Damon. We have to be better than the rest of them are."
Damon took two steps into the house and froze. "What? Move, Damon," she said, nudging him aside with her hip. Then it was her turn to freeze.
Bonnie stood in the dim room, illuminated by the dying embers of the fire. Long shadows danced across her face, but there was no hiding that mask of grief and rage. Her hands were clenched into fists at her side.
"Not like most vampires, Elena?"
"Bonnie, I can explain-" she started. But unimaginable pain threatened to split her head in two. She collapsed to the ground, dimly aware of Damon's body falling beside her. Elena wasn't sure which was worse: the physical pain that threatened to devour her, or the look of utter devastation on Bonnie's face.