The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls Read Free Page B

her mind. But sometimes it felt as if he got awfully close to the line. Yes, it was definitely Damon’s fault, Elena thought. She didn’t have any feelings for him that were—well, that were anything other than sisterly. But Damon never gave up, no matter how many times she rejected him.
    Behind Elena was a thump and squelch that undoubtedly meant Matt had finally gotten off the roof of the Jag. He jumped into the fray immediately.
    “Don’t call Elena, Elena darling !” he shouted, continuing as he turned to Elena, “Wendy’s probably the name of his latest little girlfriend. And—and—and do you know what he did ? How he woke me up this morning?” Matt was quivering with indignation.
    “He picked you up and threw you on top of the car?” Elena hazarded. She talked over her shoulder to Matt because there was a faint morning breeze that tended to mold her nightgown to her body. She didn’t want Damon behind her just now.
    “No! I mean, yes! No and yes! But—when he did, he didn’t even bother to use his hands! He just went like this”—Matt waved an arm—“and first I got dropped into a mud hole and next thing I know I got dropped on the Jag. It could have broken the moonroof—or me ! And now I’m all muddy,” Matt added, examining himself with disgust, as if it had only just occurred to him.
    Damon spoke up. “And why did I pick you up and put you down again? What were you actually doing at the time when I put some distance between us?”
    Matt flushed to the roots of his fair hair. His normally tranquil blue eyes were blazing.
    “I was holding a stick,” he said defiantly.
    “A stick. A stick like the kind you find along the roadside? That kind of stick ?”
    “I did pick it up along the roadside, yes!” Still defiant.
    “But then something strange seems to have happened to it.” From nowhere that Elena could see, Damon suddenly produced a very long, and very sturdy-looking stake, with one end that had been whittled to an extremely sharp point. It had definitely been carved from hardwood: oak from the look of it.
    While Damon was examining his “stick” from all sides with a look of acute bafflement, Elena turned on a sputtering Matt.
    “Matt!” she said reproachfully. This was definitely a low point in the cold war between the two boys.
    “I just thought,” Matt went on stubbornly, “that it might be a good idea. Since I’m sleeping outdoors at night and a… another vampire might come along.”
    Elena had already turned again and was making appeasing noises at Damon when Matt burst out afresh.
    “Tell her how you actually woke me up!” he said explosively. Then, without giving Damon a chance to say anything, he continued, “I was just opening my eyes when he dropped this on me!” Matt squelched over to Elena, holding something up. Elena, truly at a loss, took it from him, turning it over. It seemed to be a pencil stub, but it was discolored dark reddish-brown.
    “He dropped that on me and said ‘scratch off two,’” Matt said. “He’d killed two people—and he was bragging about it!”
    Elena suddenly didn’t want to be holding the pencil anymore. “Damon!” she said in a cry of real anguish, as she tried to make something out of his no-expression expression. “Damon—you didn’t—not really—”
    “Don’t beg him, Elena. The thing we’ve got to do—”
    “If anybody would let me get a word in,” Damon said, now sounding truly exasperated, “I might mention that before I could explain about the pencil someone attempted to stake me on the spot, even before getting out of his sleeping bag. And what I was going to say next was that they weren’t people. They were vampires, thugs, hired muscle—but these were possessed by Shinichi’s malach. And they were on our trail. They’d gotten as far as Warren, Kentucky, probably by asking questions about the car. We’re definitely going to have to get rid of it.”
    “No!” Matt shouted defensively. “This