days ago while she had been mute and not subject to gravity, and that was so difficult and so foreign right now. With determination, she said, "If you don't let him go - now - I'll hit you with everything I've got."
He laughed. She'd never seen Damon really laugh before, not like this. "And you expect that I'll even notice your tiny Power?"
"Notthat tiny." Elena weighed it grimly. It was no more than the intrinsic Power of any human being - the Power that vampires took from humans along with the blood they drank - but since becoming a spirit, she knew how to use it. How to attack with it. "I think you'll feel it, Damon. Let him go - NOW!"
"Why do people always assume that volume will succeed when logic won't?" Damon murmured.
Elena let him have it.
Or at least she prepared to. She took the deep breath necessary, held her inner self still, and imagined herself holding a ball of white fire, and then -
Matt was on his feet. He looked as if he'd beendragged to his feet and was being held there like a puppet, and his eyes were involuntarily watering, but it was better than Matt writhing on the ground.
"You owe me," Damon said to Elena casually. "I'll collect later."
To Matt he said, in the tones of a fond uncle, with one of those instantaneous smiles that you could never be quite sure you saw, "Lucky for me that you're a hardy specimen, isn't it?"
"Damon." Elena had seen Damon in hislet's-play-with-weaker-creatures mood, and it was the one she liked least. But there was something off today; something she couldn't understand. "Let's get down to it," she said, while the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose again. "What do youreally want?"
But he didn't give the answer she expected.
"I was officially appointed as your caretaker. I'm officially taking care of you. And for one thing, I don't think you should be without my protection and companionship while my little brother is gone."
"I can handle myself," Elena said flatly, waving a hand so they could get down to the real issue.
"You're a very pretty girl. Dangerous and" - flash smile - "unsavory elements could be after you. I insist you have a bodyguard."
"Damon, right now the thing I need most is to be protected fromyou . You know that. What is this really about?"
The clearing was...pulsing. Almost as if it were something organic, breathing. Elena had the feeling that beneath her feet - beneath Meredith's old, rugged hiking boots - the ground was moving slightly, like a great sleeping animal, and the trees were like a beating heart.
For what? The forest? There was more dead wood than live here. And she could swear that she knew Damon well enough to know that he didn't like trees or woods.
It was at times like this that Elena wished she still had wings. Wings and the knowledge - the hand motions, the Words of White Power, the white fire inside her that would allow her to know the truth without trying to figure it out, or to simply blast annoyances back to Stonehenge.
It seemed that all she'd been left with was being a greater temptation to vampires than ever, and her wits.
Wits had worked up until now. Maybe if she didn't let Damon know how afraid she was, she could win a stay of execution for them.
"Damon, I thank you for being concerned about me. Now would you mind leaving Matt and me for a moment so that I can tell if he's still breathing?"
From inside the Ray-Bans, she thought she could discern a single flash of red.
"Somehow I thought you might say that," Damon said. "And, of course, it's your right to have consolation after being so treacherously abandoned. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, for example."
Elena wanted to swear. Carefully, she answered, "Damon, if Stefan appointed you as my bodyguard, then he hardly ¡®treacherously abandoned' me, did he? You can't have it both - "
"Just indulge me in one thing, all right?" Damon said in the voice of one whose next words are going to beBe careful orDon't do anything I wouldn't do .
There was silence. The dust devils had stopped whirling. The smell of sun-warmed pine needles and pine resin in this dim place was making her languid, dizzy. The ground was warm, too, and the pine needles were all aligned, as if the slumbering animal had pine needles for fur. Elena watched dust motes turn and sparkle