'The Return: Shadow Souls Chapter 2\r'

'Elena burst aside of the gameseat of the jaguar and ran a lesser way from the car forrader act to see what had f solely on top of it.\r\nWhat had move was insipid. He was in the ferment of struggling to get up sullen his back.\r\nâ€Å" languor †oh, my theology! Are you both near? Are you designate up?” Elena cried at the same time as sluggishness was sh starting in t nonpareils of anguish:\r\nâ€Å"Elena †oh, my God! Is the Jag all right? Is it hurt?”\r\nâ€Å"Matt, are you crazy? Did you take in your chair?”\r\nâ€Å"Are in that location any secti iodines? Does the moon chapiter still ready?”\r\nâ€Å"No scratches. The moonroof is fine.” Elena had no whim if the moonroof worked, however she realize that Matt was raving, off his nous. He was hard to get follow through with let on acquire any mud on the Jag, precisely he was handicap since his legs and feet were c all e precisewhereed with mud. Getting off of the car with place using his feet was proving difficult.\r\nMeanwhile, Elena was viewing for close to. She herself had once fallen from the sky, yes, only when she had been dead for six months early and had arrived naked, and Matt fulfilled incomplete requirement. She had a more pragmatic explanation in mind.\r\nAnd in that location it was, lounging against a yellowwood tree diagram and eyeing the scene with a precise slight, wicked smile.\r\nDamon.\r\nHe was wedge; non as presbyopic-stalked as Stefan, merely with an undefinable aura of menace that more than raise up for it. He was as immaculately refined as endlessly: obscure Armani jeans, melanise shirt, black strap roof, and black boots, which all went with his raffishly windblown dark hairsbreadth and his black eyeball.\r\nRight straightaway, he made Elena acutely sure that she was wearing a long white night-robe that she had brought with the desire that she could c clinge her clothes underneath it if necessary while they were camping. The worry was that she usually did this skillful at dawn, and to twenty-four hour period writing in her diary had distracted her. And all at once the nightgown wasnt the correct attire for an early- dawning deal with Damon. It wasnt sheer, universe more resembling to flannel than to nylon, only if it was lacy, curiously virtually the boast it away. Lace around a pretty neck to a vampire †as Damon had told her †was ilk a beckon red ink cl oak in front of a untamed bull.\r\nElena crossed her girds over her chest. She overly tried to draw sure that her aura was pulled in decorously.\r\nâ€Å"You look desire Wendy,” Damon said, and his smile was wicked, flashing, and definitely appreciative. He cocked his head to the side coaxingly.\r\nElena ref dod to be coaxed. â€Å"Wendy who?” she said, and at tho that moment recorded the stomach name of the young daughter in Peter Pan, and winced inwardly. Elen a had always been well(p) at repartee of this kind. The conundrum was that Damon was better.\r\nâ€Å"Why, Wendy…Darling,” Damon said, and his voice was a vexss.\r\nElena matte up an inward shiver. Damon had promised not to Influence her †to use his extrasensory powers to obliterate or assure her mind. provided sometimes it felt as if he got horribly close to the line. Yes, it was definitely Damons fault, Elena thought. She didnt sustain any feelings for him that were †well, that were anything other than sisterly. solely Damon never gave up, no consider how many times she spurned him.\r\nBehind Elena was a ticktock and squelch that undoubtedly meant Matt had finally gotten off the roof of the Jag. He jumped into the fray immediately.\r\nâ€Å"Dont shout Elena, Elena darling!” he shouted, continuing as he rancid to Elena, â€Å"Wendys probably the name of his current little girlfriend. And †and †and do you drive in what he did? How he woke me up this first light?” Matt was quivering with indignation.\r\nâ€Å"He peck ated you up and threw you on top of the car?” Elena hazarded. She talked over her shoulder to Matt because thither was a faint morning breeze that tended to mold her nightgown to her body. She didnt penury Damon behind her honest at once.\r\nâ€Å"No! I mean, yes! No and yes! But †when he did, he didnt even bother to use his hands! He meet went like this” †Matt waved an work up †â€Å"and first I got brush offped into a mud hole and near thing I go to sleep I got dropped on the Jag. It could feature broken the moonroof †or me! And now Im all muddy,” Matt added, examining himself with disgust, as if it had only good occurred to him.\r\nDamon verbalize up. â€Å"And why did I ointment you up and put you subjugate again? What were you actually doing at the time when I put some distance amongst us?”\r\nMatt scarlet to th e roots of his ordinary hair. His usually tranquil blue eye were blazing.\r\nâ€Å"I was safekeeping a regulate,” he said defiantly.\r\nâ€Å"A contract. A stick like the kind you commence along the roadside? That kind of stick?”\r\nâ€Å"I did pick it up along the roadside, yes!” Still defiant.\r\nâ€Å"But then something strange seems to select happened to it.” From nowhere that Elena could see, Damon suddenly produced a very long, and very sturdy- looking at stake, with one end that had been whittled to an extremely precipitate point. It had definitely been carved from hardwood: oak from the look of it.\r\nWhile Damon was examining his â€Å"stick” from all sides with a look of acute bafflement, Elena turned on a sputtering Matt.\r\nâ€Å"Matt!” she said reproachfully. This was definitely a low point in the cold war amid the devil boys.\r\nâ€Å"I notwithstanding thought,” Matt went on stubbornly, â€Å"that it magnate be a good idea. Since Im sleeping outdoors at night and a…another(prenominal) vampire might sur stage along.”\r\n Elena had already turned again and was fashioning appeasing noises at Damon when Matt burst out afresh.\r\nâ€Å"Tell her how you actually woke me up!” he said explosively. Then, without expectant Damon a chance to separate anything, he move, â€Å"I was secure opening my eyeball when he dropped this on me!” Matt inhibit over to Elena, holding something up. Elena, really at a loss, took it from him, turning it over. It seemed to be a pencil stub, merely it was discolored dark reddish-brown.\r\nâ€Å"He dropped that on me and said ‘scratch off two,” Matt said. â€Å"Hed killed two people †and he was boast about it!”\r\nElena suddenly didnt indirect request to be holding the pencil anymore.\r\nâ€Å"Damon!” she said in a cry of real anguish, as she tried to make something out of his no-expression express ion. â€Å"Damon †you didnt †not really †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Dont pray him, Elena. The thing weve got to do †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"If anybody would let me get a enounce in,” Damon said, now sounding actually exasperated, â€Å"I might hint that before I could excuse about the pencil individual attempted to stake me on the spot, even before get out of his sleeping bag. And what I was sack to say coterminous was that they werent people. They were vampires, thugs, hired muscle †but these were possessed by Shinichis malach. And they were on our trail. Theyd gotten as far as Warren, Kentucky, probably by asking questions about the car. Were definitely departure to have to get unfreeze of it.”\r\nâ€Å"No!” Matt shouted defensively. â€Å"This car †this car nub something to Stefan and Elena.”\r\nâ€Å"This car means something to you,” Damon corrected. â€Å"And I might point out that I had to leave my Ferrari in a cree k just so we could take you on this little expedition.”\r\nElena held up her hand. She didnt motivation to hear any more. She did have feelings for the car. It was big and brilliantly red and flashy and buoyant †and it verbalized how she and Stefan had been feeling on the day that he bought it for her, celebrating the start of their untested flavour together. however looking at it made her remember the day, and the weight of Stefans arm around her shoulder and the way hed looked chain reactor at her, when shed looked up at him †his green eye light with mischief and the joy of getting her something she really wanted.\r\nTo Elenas embarrassment and fury, she prime that she was shaking slightly, and that her own eyes were full of tears.\r\nâ€Å"You see,” Matt said, blatant at Damon. â€Å"Now youre making her cry.”\r\nâ€Å"I am? Im not the one who mentioned my dear gone(p) younger brother,” Damon said urbanely.\r\nâ€Å"Just stop it! Ri ght now! Both of you,” Elena shouted, trying to find her composure. â€Å"And I dont want this pencil, if you dont mind,” she added, holding it at arms length.\r\nWhen Damon took it, Elena wiped her hands on her nightgown, feeling vaguely light-headed. She shivered, cerebration of the vampires on their trail.\r\nAnd then, suddenly, as she swayed, at that place was a fervid, strong arm around her and Damons voice beside her saying, â€Å"What she necessitate is some fresh air, and Im going away to give it to her.”\r\nAbruptly Elena was weightless and she was in Damons arms and they were going higher.\r\nâ€Å"Damon, could you please put me down?”\r\nâ€Å"Right now, darling? Its sort of a a distance…”\r\nElena continued to remonstrate with Damon, but she could prescribe that he had tuned her out. And the cool morning air was clearing her head a bit, although it also made her shake.\r\nShe tried to stop the shivering, but couldnt back up it. Damon glanced down at her and to her surprise, looking completely serious, began to make motions as if to take his jacket off. Elena hastily said, â€Å"No, no †you just drive †fly, I mean, and Ill hang on.”\r\nâ€Å"And watch for low-going seagulls,” Damon said solemnly, but with a quirk at the side of his mouth. Elena had to turn her face away because she was in risk of infection of laughing.\r\nâ€Å"So, just when did you learn you could pick people up and drop them on cars?” she inquired.\r\nâ€Å"Oh, just recently. It was like flying: a challenge. And you acknowledge I like challenges.”\r\nHe was looking down at her with mischief in his eyes, those black on black eyes with such long lashes that they were surplus on a boy. Elena felt as light as if she were dandelion fluff, but also a little light-headed, almost tipsy.\r\nShe was much warmer now, because †she realized †Damon had enfolded her in his aura, which was warm. Not just in temperature, either, but warm with a heady, almost drunken detainment, as he took her in, her eyes and her face and her hair travel weightlessly in a cloud of gold around her shoulders. Elena couldnt help but blush, and she almost hear his thought, that crimson suited her very well, pale pink against her fair complexion.\r\nAnd just as blushing was an nonvoluntary physical reception to his warmth and appreciation, Elena felt an involuntary emotional response †of thankfulness for what he had done, of gratitude for his appreciation, and of unintentional appreciation of Damon himself. He had saved her life tonight, if she knew anything about vampires possessed by Shinichis malach, vampires who were thugs to begin with. She couldnt even cogitate what such creatures would do to her, and she didnt want to. She could only be effulgent that Damon had been clever enough and, yes, pitiless enough to take care of them before they got to her.\r\nAnd she would have to be b lind and just manifest stupid not to treasure the fact that Damon was gorgeous. After having died twice, this fact did not affect her as it would most other girls, but it was still a fact, whether Damon was musing or giving one of those rare genuine smiles that he seemed to have only for Elena.\r\nThe problem with this was that Damon was a vampire and could indeed read her mind, especially with Elena be so close, their auras intermingling. And Damon appreciated Elenas appreciation, and it became a little cycle of feedback, all on its own. Before Elena could quite focus she was melting, her weightless body feeling heavier as it shaped itself to Damons arms.\r\nAnd the other problem was that Damon wasnt Influencing her; he was as caught up in the feedback as Elena was †more so, because he didnt have any barriers against it. Elena did, but they were blurring, dissolving. She couldnt think properly. Damon was gazing at her with ask and a look she was all too used to visual perception †but she couldnt remember where.\r\nElena had mazed the power to analyze. She was simply basking in the warm glow of being cherished, being held and loved and cared for with an speciality that shook her to the bone.\r\nAnd when Elena gave of herself, she gave completely. Almost without certain effort, she arched her head back to expose her throat and unopen her eyes.\r\nDamon gently positioned her head differently, support it with one hand, and kissed her.\r\n'