"The Guardians imprisoned it," Elena said. "Would they help us send it back?"
"I don't know," Damon said shortly. "I wouldn't ask them if I could help it, though. I don't trust them, do you?"
Elena thought of the cool efficiency of the Guardians, of the way they had dismissed Damon's death as irrelevant. Of the way they had caused her own parents' death. "No,"
she said, shivering. "Let's leave them out of it if we can."
"We'l defeat it ourselves, Elena," Damon said, and caressed her cheek with his hand.
"Stop it," Elena said. "We have to concentrate."
Damon stopped trying to touch her for a moment and thought. "Tel me about your little friends. Have people been tense? Fighting? Acting out of character?"
"Yes," Elena said immediately. "No one's been acting like themselves. I can't put my finger on it, but something's been wrong since we got back."
Damon nodded. "Since it probably came with you, it makes sense that it would have targeted you and those connected to you as its first victims."
"But how do we stop it?" Elena asked. "What do these stories you've heard about the Original phantoms say about recapturing them once they've escaped from their prison?"
Damon sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little.
"Nothing," he said. "I don't know anything more. I'l have to go back to the Dark Dimension and see what I can find out, or if I can fight the phantom from there."
Elena stiffened. "It's too dangerous, Damon."
Damon chuckled, a dry sound in the darkness, and Elena felt his fingers run through her hair, smoothing the silky strands, then twisting them, tugging them gently. "Not for me," he said. "The Dark Dimension is a great place to be a vampire."
"Except that you died there," Elena reminded him.
"Damon, please. I can't stand to lose you again."
Damon's hand stil ed, and then he was kissing her gently, and his other hand came up to touch her cheek. "Elena," he said as he reluctantly broke the kiss. "You won't lose me."
"There has to be another way," she insisted.
"Wel , then we'd better find it, and soon," Damon answered grimly. "Otherwise the entire world wil be at risk."
Damon was saturated with Elena. Her sweet, rich scent in his nostrils, the throbbing beat of her heart in his ears, the silk of her hair and the satin of her skin against his fingers. He wanted to kiss her, to hold her, to sink his fangs into her and taste the heady nectar of her blood, that vibrant blood that tasted like no one else's.
But she made him go, although he knew she didn't real y want to.
She didn't say it was because of his little brother that she pushed him away, but he knew anyway. It was always Stefan.
When he left her, he transformed graceful y into a large black crow again and flew from her bedroom window to the quince tree nearby. There, he folded his wings and shifted from one foot to another, settling in to watch over her. He could sense her through the window, anxious at first, her thoughts churning, but soon her pulse slowed, her breathing deepened, and he knew she was asleep. He would stay and guard her.
There was no question: He had to save her. If Elena wanted a chivalrous knight, someone who would protect her nobly, Damon could do that. Why should that weakling Stefan have al the glory?
But he wasn't sure what came next. Despite Elena's begging him not to go, heading into the Dark Dimension seemed like the logical next step in fighting this phantom. But how to get there? There were no easy paths. He didn't have the time to journey to one of the gates again, nor did he want to leave Elena's side long enough to travel there. And he couldn't expect to find something as useful as a star bal again by chance.
Plus, if he did get there, being in the Dark Dimension would have special dangers for him now. He didn't think the Guardians knew he had come back from the dead, and he didn't know how they would react when they did. He'd rather not find out. The Guardians didn't care for vampires much, and they tended to like things to stay the way they ought to be. Look at how they had stripped Elena's Powers when she came to their attention.
Damon hunched his shoulders and fluffed out his iridescent feathers irritably. There had to be another way. There was the slightest rustle underfoot. No one without the sensitive ears of a vampire would have heard it, it was so cautious, but Damon caught it. He snapped to attention and peered sharply around. No one would get to his princess.
Oh. Damon relaxed again and clicked his beak in vexation. Stefan. The shadowy figure of his little brother stood beneath the tree, head tilted back, gazing in devotion at Elena's darkened window. Of course he was there, standing by to defend her against al the horrors of the night.
And just like that, Damon knew what he had to do: If he wanted to learn more about the phantom, he'd have to give himself over to it.
He closed his eyes, al owing every negative feeling he'd ever had about Stefan to wash over him. How Stefan had always taken everything Damon wanted, had stolen it, if he needed to.
Damn Stefan, Damon thought bitterly. If his brother hadn't come to town earlier than him, Damon would have had a chance to make Elena fal in love with him first, to be the one to reap the utter devotion he saw in her eyes when she looked at Stefan.
Instead, here he was, second-best. He hadn't been enough for Katherine either; she had wanted his brother, too. Elena, tiger to the kitten Katherine had been, would have been the perfect mate for Damon. Beautiful, strong, wily, capable of great love, they could have ruled the night together.
But she had fal en for his lily-livered weakling of a little brother. Damon's claws clenched the branch he sat on.
"Isn't it sad," a quiet voice beside him suggested, "how you try and try, but you're never enough for the women you love?"
A cool tendril of fog touched his wing. Damon straightened and looked around. Dark fog was winding around the quince tree, just at Damon's level. Below, Stefan stood unaware. The fog had come for Damon alone. With a private smile, Damon felt the fog envelop him, and then al was darkness.
Chapter 27
The next morning was another hot one. The air was so thick and humid that just walking down the street felt unpleasantly like getting slapped with a warm, damp washcloth. Even inside the car with the air-conditioning on, Elena could feel her usual y sleek hair frizzing from the humidity.