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."
"Trees?"Stefan barely took time to glance at Bonnie's pin-pricked arm. Then he said, "We need to get them indoors and into warm water. You take Elena - "
Oh, gladly. In fact I'd give anything,anything -
" - and this car with Bonnie right back to the boardinghouse. Wake Mrs. Flowers. Do all you can for Bonnie. I'll go on ahead and get Meredith and Matt - "
That was it! Matt. Now if only he had a mnemonic -
"They're just up the road, right? That was where your first strafe of Power seemed to come from."
A strafe, was it? Why not be honest and just call it a feeble wash?
And while it was fresh in his mind...M for Mortal, A for Annoying, T for Thing. And there you had it. The pity was that it applied to all of them and yet not