The Return: Nightfall Chapter 1

Damon Salvatore was lounging in midair, nominally supported by one branch of awho knew the names of points anyway? Who gave a damn? It was tall, it al pocket-sizeed him to peep into Caroline Forbess third-story bedroom, and it made a comfy backrest. He lay back in the convenient manoeuver fork, hands clasped together behind his channel, one neatly booted leg dangling over thirty feet of empty space. He was comfortable as a cat, eyes half-closed as he watched.He was waiting for the magic min of 444A.M . to arrive, when Caroline would perform her bizarre ritual. Hed already seen it twice and he was enthralled. thus he got a mosquito bite.Which was ridiculous because mosquitoes didnt prey on lamias. Their blood wasnt nutritious uniform human blood. But it certainly felt like a lilliputian mosquito bite on the back of his neck.He swiveled to see behind him, feeling the balmy summer night all al around him and saw nonhing.The needles of some conifer. zip flying around. Nothing crawling on them.All right then. It must fetch been a conifer needle. But it certainly did hurt. And the pain got worse with time, not better.A suicidal bee? Damon felt the back of his neck cargonfully. No venom sack, no stinger. Just a tiny squishy lump that hurt.A moment later his attention was called back to the window.He wasnt sure exactly what was going on but he could feel the sudden buzzing of part around the sleeping Caroline, like a mettlesome-tension wire. Several days ago, it had drawn him to this place, but oncehed arrived he couldnt seem to find the source.The clock ticked 440 and beeped an alarm. Caroline woke and swatted it across the room.Lucky girl, Damon thought, with wicked appreciation. If I were a rogue human instead of a vampire, then your virtue presuming youve any left might be in danger. Fortunately for you, I had to give up all that sort of thing nearly half a millennium ago.Damon flashed a grinning at vigor in particular, held it for a twentieth o f a second, and then turned it off, his black eyes going cold. He looked back into the open window.Yeshed constantly felt that his idiot younger brother Stefan didnt appreciate Caroline Forbes enough. There was no doubt that the girl was worth looking at farthestsighted, golden-br experience limbs, a full-fashioned body, and bronze-colored hair that fell around her face in waves. And then thither was her mind. Naturally skewed, vengeful, spiteful. Delicious. For instance, if he wasnt mistaken, she was working with little voodoo dolls on her desk in there.Terrific.Damon wish to see the creative arts at work.The alien Power still buzzed, and still he couldnt get a fix on it. Was it inside in thegirl ? Surely not.Caroline was hastily grabbing for what looked like a handful of silken green cobwebs. She stripped her T-shirt off and almost too fast for the vampire eye to see had herself dressed in lingerie that made her look like a jungle princess. She stared intently at her own re flection in a stand-alone full-length reverberate.Now, whatcan you be waiting for, little girl? Damon wondered.Well he might as well keep a low profile. There was a unconsolable flutter, one ebony feather fell to the ground, and then there was nothing but an exceptionally large crow academic session in the tree.Damon watched intently from one bright bird-eye as Caroline moved forward suddenly as if shed gotten an electric jolt, lips parted, her gaze on what seemed to be her own reflection.Then she smiled at it in greeting.Damon could pinpoint the source of Power now. It was inside the mirror. Not in the samedimension as the mirror, certainly, but contained inside it.Caroline was behaving oddly. She tossed back her prospicient bronze hair so that it fell in magnificent disarray down her back she wet her lips and smiled as if at a lover. When she spoke, Damon could hear her quite an clearly.Thank you. But youre late today.There was still no one but her in the bedroom, and Damon could hear no answer. But the lips of the Caroline in the mirror were not moving in synch with the real girls lips.Bravo he thought, always giveing to appreciate a new trick on humans. Well done, whoever you areLip-reading the mirror girls newss, he caught something aboutsorry . Andlovely .Damon cocked his head.Carolines reflection was saying, you donthave toafter today.The real Caroline answered huskily. But what if I cant fool them?And the reflection have help. Dont worry, rest easyOkay. And nobody will get, like,fatally hurt, right? I mean, were not talking about death forhumans .The reflection Why should we?Damon smiled inwardly. How many times had he heard exchanges likethat before? As a spider himself, he knew First you got your fly into the parlor then you reassured her and before she knew it, you could have anything from her, until you didntneed her any longer.And then his black eyes g be it was time for a new fly.Now Carolines hands were writhing in her lap. Just as lon g as you really you know. What you promised. You really mean it about loving me? reliance me. Ill take care of you and your enemies, too. Ive already begunSuddenly Caroline stretched, and it was a stretch that boys at Robert E. Lee High School would have paid to watch. Thats what I expect to see, she said. Im justso sick of hearing about Elena this, Stefan thatand now its going to start all over.Caroline broke off abruptly, as if someone had hung up on her on the phone and shed merely just realized it. For a moment her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. Then, slowly, she relaxed. Her eyes remained on the mirror, and one hand lifted until it was resting lightly on her stomach. She stared at it and slowly her features seemed to soften, to melt into an expression of apprehension and anxiety.But Damon hadnt taken his eyes off the mirror for an instant. Normal mirror, normal mirror, normal mirror l era Just at the last moment, as Caroline turned away, a flash of red.Flames?Now, wha tcould be going on? he thought lazily, flicker as he transformed from a sleek crow back into a drop-dead gorgeous young man lounging in a high branch of the tree. Certainly the mirror-creature wasnt from around Fells Church. But it sounded as if it meant to make trouble for his brother, and a fragile, beautiful smile touched Damons lips for a second.There was nothing he loved more than to watch self-righteous, sanctimonious, Im-better-than-you-cos-I-dont-drink-human-blood Stefan get in trouble.The teenagers of Fells Church and some of the adults regarded the tale of Stefan Salvatore and their local beauty Elena Gilbert as a modern Romeo-and-Juliet story. She had inclined her life to save his when theyd both been captured by a maniac, and afterward he had died of a broken heart. There were even whispers that Stefan had been notquite humanbut something else. A deuce lover that Elena had died to redeem.Damon knew the truth. Stefan was dead all right but he had been dead for hundr eds of years. And it was true that he was a vampire, but calling him a demon was like calling Tinkerbell armed and dangerous.Meanwhile Caroline couldnt seem to stop talking to an empty room.Just you wait, she whispered, walking over to the piles of untidy papers and books that littered her desk.She rummaged through the papers until she found a miniature video camera that had a green light shining at her like a angiotensin converting enzyme unblinking eye. Delicately, she connected the camera to her computer and began typing a password.Damons eyesight was much better than a humans, and he could clearly see the tanned fingers with the long shining bronze nailsCFRULES . Caroline Forbes rules, he thought. Pitiful.Then she turned around, and Damon saw tears well up in her eyes. The next moment, unexpectedly, she was sobbing.She sat heavily on the bed, weeping and rocking herself back and forth, occasionally striking the mattress with a clenched fist. But mainly she just sobbed and sobbe d.Damon was startled. But then custom took over and he murmured, Caroline? Caroline, may I come in?What? Who? She looked around frantically.Its Damon. May I come in? he asked, his voice dripping with mock sympathy, simultaneously employ mind control on her.All vampires had such powers of control over mortals. How great the Power was depended on many things the vampires diet (human blood was by far the most potent), the strength of the victims will, the relationship between the vampire and the victim, the fluctuation of day and night and so many other things that even Damon didnt begin to understand. He only knew when he felt his own Power quicken, as it was quickening now.And Caroline was waiting.I can come in? he said in his most musical, most beguiling voice, at the same time crushing Carolines strong will under one much stronger.Yes, she answered, wiping her eyes promptly, apparently seeing nothing unusual in his entrance by a third-story window. Their eyes locked. Come in, Da mon.She had issued the necessary invitation for a vampire. With one graceful motion he swung himself over the sill. The internal of her room smelled like perfumes and not subtle ones. He felt really quite savage now it was surprising the way the bloodfever had come on so suddenly, so irresistibly. His upper canines had extended to about half again their size, and their edges were razor-sharp.This was no time for conversation, for loitering around as he usually did. For a gourmet, half the recreation was in the anticipation, sure, but right now he was inneed . He drew strongly on his Power to control the human brain and gave Caroline a dazzling smile.That was all it took.Caroline had been moving toward him now she stopped. Her lips, partly open to ask a question, remained parted and her pupils suddenly widened as if she were in a dark room, and then contracted and remained contracted.II she managed. OhhhThere. She was his. And so easily, too.His fangs were throbbing with a kind o f pleasurable pain, a tender soreness beckoning him to strike as quickly as the lunge of a cobra, to sink his teeth to the hilt in an artery. He was hungry no,starving and his whole body was burning with the urge to drink as deep as he liked. After all, there were others to choose from if he drained this vessel dry.Carefully, never taking his eyes from hers, he lifted Carolines head to bankrupt her throat, with the sweet pulse throbbing in its hollow. It filled all his senses the beating of her heart, the smell of the exotic blood just under the surface, dense and ripe and sweet. His head was spinning. Hed never been so excited, so eager So eager that it gave him pause. After all, one girl was as good as another, right? What was different about this time? What waswrong with him?And then he knew.Ill have my own mind back, thank you.Suddenly Damons intellect was icy cold the sensual aura in which hed been trap frozen over instantly. He dropped Carolines chin and stood very still.H ehad almost fallen under the influence of the thing that was exploitation Caroline. It had been trying to snare him into breaking his word to Elena.And again, he could just barely sense a whisk of red in the mirror.It was one of those creatures drawn to the nova of Power that Fells Church had become he knew that. It had been using him, spurring him on, trying to get him to drain Caroline dry. To take all her blood, to kill a human, something he hadnt done since meeting Elena.Why?Coldly furious, he centered himself, and then probed in all directions with his mind to find the parasite. It should still be here the mirror was only a portal for it to travel crushed outstrips. And it had been controlling him him, Damon Salvatore so it had to be very close indeed.Still, he could find nothing. That made him even angrier than before. Absently fingering the back of his neck, he sent a dark messageI will warn you once, and once only. Stay away from MEHe sent the thought out with a blast of Power that flashed like sheet lightning in his own senses. It ought to have knocked something dead nearby from the roof, from the air, from a branchmaybe even from next door. Fromsomewhere , a creature should have plummeted to the ground, and he should have been able to sense it.But although Damon could feel clouds darkening above him in response to his mood, and the wind rubbing branches together outside, there was no falling body, no attempt at dying retaliation.He could find nothing close enough to have entered his thoughts, and nothing at a distance could be that strong. Damon might amuse himself sometimes by pretending to be vain, but underneath he had a cool and logical ability to break down himself. He was strong. He knew that. As long as he kept himself well nourished and free of weakening sentiment, there were few creatures that could stand against him at least in this plane.Two were right here in Fells Church,a little mocking counterpoint in his mind said, but Damon shrugged that off disdainfully. Surely there could be no other vampire Elders nearby, or he would sense them. Ordinary vampires, yes, they were already flocking. But they were all too weak to enterhis mind.He was evenly certain there was no creature within range that could challenge him. He would have sensed it as he sensed the blazing ley lines of unearthly magical power that formed a nexus under Fells Church.He looked at Caroline again, still held motionless by the trance hed put on her. She would come out of it gradually, none the worse for the experience for whathed done to her, at least.He turned and, as gracefully as a panther, swung out of the window, onto the tree and then dropped easily thirty feet to the ground.