you is the one saying it."
"Elena, I assure you, it's all me. I quite enjoyed it when I made him hurt you. I liked to hear the way you cried out. I made him tear your clothes - I had to hurt him a lot to get him to do it. But didn't you notice that your camisole had been torn, and that you were barefooted? That was all Mutt."
Elena forced her mind back to the moment she had come to herself leaping out of the Ferrari. Yes, then, and in the time afterward she had been barefooted and bare-armed, wearing only a camisole. Quite a bit of the fabric of her jeans had been left on the roadside after that, and in the surrounding vegetation. But it had never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to her boots and socks, or how her camisole had been torn in strips at the bottom. She'd simply been so grateful for help...to the one who had hurt her in her first place.
Oh, Damon must have thought that ironic. She suddenly realized she herself was thinking ofDamon and not ofthe possessor. Not of Shinichi and Misao.But they weren't the same, she told herself. I've got to remember that!
"Yes, I enjoyed making him hurt you, and I enjoyed hurting you. I made him bring me a willow rod, just the right thickness, and then whipped you with it. You enjoyed that, too, I promise you. Don't bother to look for marks because they've all gone like the others. But all three of us enjoyed hearing your cries. You...and me...and Mutt, too. In fact, of all of us, he may have enjoyed it most."
"Damon, shut up! I won't listen to you talk about Matt that way!"
"I wouldn't let him see you without your clothes on, though," Damon confided, as if he hadn't heard a word. "That was when I had him - dismissed. Put into another snow globe. I wanted to hunt you as you tried to get away from me, in an empty globe that you could never get out of. I wanted to see that special look in your eyes that you get when you fight with everything you have - and I wanted to see it defeated. You're no fighter, Elena." Damon laughed suddenly, an ugly sound, and to Elena's shock his arm shot out and he punched through the wall of the widow's walk.
"Damon..." She was sobbing by now.
"And then I wanted to dothis ." With no warning, Damon's fist forced her chin up, jerking her head back. His other hand tangled in her hair, bringing her neck back to the exact position he wanted her to be in. And then Elena felt him strike, quick as a cobra, and felt the two tearing wounds in the side of her neck, and her own blood spurting out of them.
Ages later, Elena woke up sluggishly. Damon was still enjoying himself, clearly lost in the experience of having Elena Gilbert. And there was no time to make different plans.
Her body simply took over by itself, startling her almost as much as it startled Damon. Even as he lifted his head, her hand plucked the magical house key off his finger. Then she gripped, twisted, lifted her knees as high as she could, and kicked outward, sending Damon smashing through the splintered, rotted wood that formed the outside railing of the widow's walk.
Chapter 34
Elena had once fallen off that balcony and Stefan had jumped and caught her before she could hit the ground. A human falling from that height would be dead on impact. A vampire in full possession of his or her reflexes would simply twist in the air like a cat and land lightly on their feet. But one in Damon's particular circumstances tonight...
From the sound of it, he had tried to twist, but had only ended up landing on his side and breaking bones. Elena deduced the latter from his cursing. She didn't wait to listen for more specifics. She was off like a rabbit, down to the level of Stefan's room - where instantaneously and almost unconsciously, she sent out a wordless plea - and then down the stairs. The cabin had turned completely into a perfect duplicate of the boardinghouse. Elena didn't know why, but instinctively she ran to the side of the house that Damon would know the least: the old servant's quarters. She got that far before she dared whispering things to the house,