"But you still don't seem to have a grasp of polysyllabic English, so I'll put this as simply as I can. You threw the fight."
"I threw the fight," Stefan said flatly, apparently seeing that Damon wasn't going to answer any of his questions until he'd told the truth. "I just thanked God thatyou seemed to be too mad or drunk to be very observant. I wanted to keep you and the rest of the world from figuring out just exactly what Elena's blood does. So you drove away without even trying to get a good look at her. And without suspecting that I could have shaken you off like a flea from the very beginning."
"I never thought you had it in you." Damon was reliving their little combat in all-too-vivid detail. It was true: he had never suspected that Stefan's performance had been entirely that - a performance - and that he could have thrown Damon down at any time and done whatever he'd wanted.
"And there's your benefactress." Damon nodded up to where Elena was floating, secured by - yes, it was true - secured by clothesline to the clutch. "Just a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor," he remarked, unable to help himself as he gazed up at her. Elena was, in fact, so bright that to look at her with Power channeled to the eyes was like trying to stare straight into the sun.
"She seems to have forgotten how to hide as well; she's shining like a G0 star."
"She doesn't know how to lie, Damon." It was clear that Stefan's anger was steadily mounting. "Now tell me what's going on and what you've done to Bonnie."
The impulse to answer,Nothing. Why, do you think I should? was almost irresistible - almost. But Damon was facing a different Stefan than he'd ever seen before. This is not the little brother you know and love to trample into the ground, the voice of logic told him, and he heeded it.
"The other two huuu-mans," Damon said, drawing the word out to its full obscene length, "are in their automobile. And" - suddenly virtuous - "I was taking Bonnie toyour place."
Stefan was standing by the car, at a perfect distance for examining Bonnie's outflung arm. The pinpricks turned into a smear of blood when he touched them, and Stefan examined his own fingers with horror. He kept repeating the experiment. Soon Damon would be drooling, a highly undignified behavior that he wished to avoid.
Instead, he concentrated on a nearby astronomical phenomenon.
The full moon, medium high, and white and pure as snow. And Elena floating in front of it, wearing an old-fashioned high-necked nightgown - and little if anything else. As long as he looked at her without the Power needed to discern her aura, he could examine her as a girl rather than as an angel in the midst of blinding incandescence.
Damon cocked his head to get a better view of the silhouette. Yes, that was definitely the right apparel for her, and she should always stand in front of brilliant lights. If he -
Slam.
He was flying backward and to the left. He hit a tree, trying to make sure that Bonnie didn't hit it, too - she might break. Momentarily stunned, he floated - wafted really - down to the ground.
Stefan was on top of him.
"You," said Damon somewhat indistinctly through the blood in his mouth, "have been a naughty boy, boy."
"She made me. Literally. I thought she might die if I didn't take some of her blood - her aura was that swollen. Now you tell me what's wrong with Bonnie - "
"So you bled her despite your heroic unflagging resistance - "
Slam.
This new tree smelled of resin. I never particularly wanted to get acquainted with the insides of trees, Damon thought as he spat out a mouthful of blood. Even as a crow I only use them when necessary.
Stefan had somehow snatched Bonnie out of the air while Damon was flying toward the tree. He was that fast now. He was very, very fast. Elena was aphenomenon .
"So now you have a secondhand idea what Elena's blood is like."And Stefan could hear Damon's private thoughts. Normally, Damon was always up for a fight, but right now he could almost hear Elena's weeping over her human friends, and something inside him felt tired. Very old - centuries old - and very tired.
But as for the question, well,yes . Elena was still bobbing aimlessly, sometimes spread-eagled and sometimes balled up like a kitten. Her blood was rocket fuel compared to the unleaded gasoline in most girls.
And Stefan wanted to fight. Wasn't even trying to hide it. I was right, Damon thought. For vampires, the urge to squabble is stronger than any other urge, even the need to feed or, in Stefan's case, the concern for his - what was the word? Oh, yes.Friends.
Now Damon was trying to elude a thrashing, trying to enumerate his assets, which weren't many, because Stefan was still holding him down. Thought. Speech. A penchant for fighting dirty that Stefan just couldn't seem to understand. Logic. An instinctive ability to find the chinks in his foe's armor...
Hmmm...
"Meredith and" - damn! What was that boy'sname ? - "her escort are dead by now, I think," he said innocently. "We can stay here and brawl, if that's what you want to call it, considering that I never laid a finger on you - or we can try to resuscitate them. Which will it be, I wonder?" He really did wonder about how much control Stefan had over himself right now.
As if Damon had zoomed out abruptly with a camera, Stefan seemed to become smaller. He had been floating a few feet above the ground; now he landed and looked about himself in astonishment, obviously unaware that he had been airborne.
Damon spoke in the pause while Stefan was most vulnerable. "I wasn't the one who hurt them," he added. "If you'll look at Bonnie" - thank badness, he knewher name - "you'll see that no vampire could do it. I think" - he added ingenuously, for shock value - "that the attackers were trees, controlled by malach."