Elena stopped. There was a thick, drifting pile of ash that looked like it would be at least as high as her waist in places. She thought she could see where Damon had awoken - the ash was disturbed and caved in, as if someone had tunneled out of one of the deeper drifts. But there was no one around except themselves. A cold wind blew up a spray of ash, and Bonnie coughed. Elena, kneedeep in cold, sticky ash, dropped Bonnie's hand and wrapped her arms around herself.
"He's not here," she said blankly. "I was so sure he would be here."
"He must be somewhere else, then," said Matt logical y.
"I'm sure he's fighting the phantom, like you said he was going to. The Dark Dimension's a big place."
Bonnie shivered and huddled closer to Matt, her brown eyes huge and ful of pathos, like a hungry puppy's. "Can we go home now? Please? Sage can send us back again, can't he?"
"I just don't understand," Elena said, staring at the empty space where the great trunk of the tree had once been. "I just knew he would be here. I could practical y hear him cal ing me."
Just then a low, musical laugh cut through the silence. It was a beautiful sound, but there was something chil y and alien about it, something that made Elena shudder.
"Elena," Bonnie whispered, her eyes wide. "That's the thing I heard before the fog took me."
They turned.
Behind them stood a woman. A woman-shaped being, anyway, Elena amended quickly. This was no woman. And, like its laugh, this woman-shaped being was beautiful, but frightening. She - it - was huge, more than one and a half times the size of a human, but perfectly proportioned, and it looked like it was made of ice and mist in blues and greens like the purest glacier, its eyes were clear with just a touch of pale green. As they watched, its solid, icytranslucent h*ps and legs shifted and blurred, changing to a swirl of mist.
A long wave of blue-green hair drifted behind it, its shape like a gradual y roiling cloud. It smiled at Elena, and its sharp teeth shone like silvery icicles. There was something in its chest, though, that wasn't ice, something solid and roundish and dark, dark red.
Elena saw al of this in an instant before her attention was ful y riveted on what hung from the ice-woman-thing's outstretched hand.
"Damon." She gasped.
The ice-woman was holding him casual y around the neck, ignoring his struggles as he dangled in the air. It held him so easily that he looked like a toy. The black-clad vampire swung out with his leg, kicking at the ice-woman's side, but his foot simply passed through mist.
"Elena," Damon said in a choked, thin voice. The ice-woman - the phantom - cocked its head to one side and looked at Damon, then squeezed his neck a little tighter.
"I don't need to breathe, you... idiot phantom," he gasped defiantly.
The phantom's smile widened and it said in a sweet, cold voice, like crystals chiming together, "But your head can pop off, can't it? That'l do just as wel ." It shook him a little, and then transferred its smile to Elena, Bonnie, and Matt. Elena instinctively stepped back as the glacier-cold eyes found her.
"Welcome," the phantom said to her in a tone of pleasure, as though they were old friends. "I've found you and your friends so refreshing, al your little jealousies. Each of you with your own special flavor of envy. You've got an awful lot of problems, don't you? I haven't felt so strong or so wel -nourished for mil ennia." Its face became thoughtful, and it began to shake Damon gently up and down. He was making a guttural choking noise now, and tears of pain ran down his face.
"But you real y should have stayed where I put you," the phantom continued, its voice a little colder, and it swung Damon casual y in a great arc through the air. He wheezed and pul ed at its huge hand. Was it even true that he didn't need to breathe? Elena didn't know. Damon wasn't above lying about it if he had a reason, or even for no reason except to annoy his opponent.
"Stop it!" Elena shouted.
The phantom laughed again, genuinely amused. "Go ahead and make me, little one." Its grip tightened around Damon's throat and he shuddered. Then his eyes rol ed back until Elena could see only the ghastly, red-veined whites of his eyes, and he went limp.
Chapter 32
Matt watched in horror as the phantom shook Damon like a rag dol .
Elena spun around to lock eyes with Matt and Bonnie.
"We have to save him," she whispered, a fierce determination on her face, and immediately took off running, shoving her way through the piles of ash. Matt figured that if Damon, with al his vampire strength and fighting skil s honed over the centuries, was so completely helpless in the hands of this phantom - and jeez, with the way it was yanking him back and forth now, his head real y was going to pop off - then Matt, Bonnie, and Elena had less than a snowbal 's chance in hel of making any difference to this fight. The only real question would be whether the phantom would kil them, too. And the truth was that Matt didn't even like Damon, not one tiny little bit. Sure, Damon had helped save Fel 's Church from Katherine and Klaus, and from the kitsune demons, but he was stil a murderous, sarcastic, unrepentant, cocky, arrogant, nasty, usual y unpleasant vampire. Damon had undoubtedly hurt more people than he had helped over his long life, even if you generously credited him with saving every single resident of Fel 's Church. And he always cal ed Matt "Mutt," pretending that he couldn't remember his actual name, which was completely infuriating. As Damon meant it to be. Stil , Elena loved Damon. For whatever reason. Probably the same inexplicable reason that regular girls loved regular old bad boys, Matt suspected. A dyed-in-the-wool good guy, he'd never seen the appeal himself. But Elena did.
And Damon was part of the team, sort of, and you didn't leave your teammates to get decapitated by demon icewomen on ash-blanketed moons in other dimensions without at least doing your best to put up a fight. Not even if you didn't like them at al .
Matt ran after Elena, and Bonnie fol owed. When they reached the phantom, Elena was already scrabbling at the icy blue hand clutched around Damon's throat, trying to pry its fingers up enough to slip her own underneath. The phantom barely glanced at her. Matt gave an inward sigh at the hopelessness of it al and swung a powerful roundhouse blow toward the phantom's stomach.
Before his fist could connect, his target turned from ice to swirling, intangible mist, and his punch passed right through the phantom. Thrown off balance, Matt staggered and fel into the phantom's now-vaporous torso.