The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall Read Free

He’d 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 was wrong with him?
    And then he knew.
    I’ll have my own mind back, thank you.
    Suddenly Damon’s intellect was icy cold; the sensual aura in which he’d been trapped frozen over instantly. He dropped Caroline’s chin and stood very still.
    He had almost fallen under the influence of the thing that was using 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 Fell’s 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 hadn’t 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 small distances. 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 ofhis neck, he sent a dark message:
    I will warn you once, and once only. Stay away from ME!
    He 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 branch…maybe even from next door. From somewhere , 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 analyze 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 Fell’s 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 enter his mind.
    He was equally certain there was no creature withinrange that could challenge him. He would have sensed it as he sensed the blazing ley lines of uncanny magical power that formed a nexus under Fell’s Church.
    He looked at Caroline again, still held motionless by the trance he’d put on her. She would come out of it gradually, none the worse for the experience—for what he’d 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.

2
    D amon had to wait some hours for another opportunity to feed—there were too many girls in deep sleep—and he was furious. The hunger that the manipulative creature had roused in him was real, even if it hadn’t succeeded in making him its puppet. He needed blood; and he needed it soon .
    Only then would he think over the implications of Caroline’s strange mirror-guest: that truly demonic demon lover who had handed her over to Damon to be killed, even while pretending to make a deal with her.
    Nine A.M . saw him driving down the main street of the town, past an antique store, eateries, a shop for greeting cards.
    Wait. There it was. A new store that sold sunglasses. He parked and got out of the car with an elegance of motion born of centuries of careless movement that wasted notan erg of