The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall Read Online Free Page A

it was one of the greatest physical anguishes that he had ever had to endure, and that at last tears formed in his eyes and rolled down his temples and down into his wavy dark hair.
    Worse, for a vampire, was the humiliation of having another vampire treat you like a human, treat you like meat . Stefan’s heart was pounding in his ears as he writhed under the double carving knives of Damon’s canines, trying to bear the mortification of being used this way. At least—thank God—Elena had listened to him and stayed in his room.
    He was beginning to wonder if Damon had truly gone insane and meant to kill him when—at last—with a shove that sent him off balance, Damon released him. Stefan tripped and fell, rolled, and looked up, only to find Damon standing over him again. He pressed his fingers to the torn flesh on his neck.
    “And now,” Damon said coldly, “you will go up and get me my jacket.”
    Stefan got up slowly. He knew Damon must be savoring this: Stefan’s humiliation, Stefan’s neat clotheswrinkled and covered with torn blades of grass and mud from Mrs. Flowers’ scraggly flower bed. He did his best to brush them off with one hand, the other still pressed to his neck.
    “You’re quiet,” Damon remarked, standing by his Ferrari, running his tongue over his lips and gums, his eyes narrow with pleasure. “No snappy back talk? Not even a word? I think this is a lesson I should teach you more often.”
    Stefan was having trouble making his legs move. Well, that went about as well as could be expected, he thought as he turned back toward the boardinghouse. Then he stopped.
    Elena was leaning out of the unshuttered window in his room, holding Damon’s jacket. Her expression was very sober, suggesting she’d seen everything.
    It was a shock for Stefan, but he suspected it was an even greater shock for Damon.
    And then Elena whirled the jacket around once and threw it so that it made a direct landing at Damon’s feet, wrapping around them.
    To Stefan’s astonishment, Damon went pale. He picked up the jacket as if he didn’t really want to touch it. His eyes were on Elena the whole time. He got in his car.
    “Good-bye, Damon. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure—”
    Without a word, looking for all the world like a naughtychild who’d been whipped, Damon turned on the ignition.
    “Just leave me alone,” he said expressionlessly in a low voice.
    He drove off in a cloud of dust and gravel.
     
    Elena’s eyes were not serene when Stefan shut the door to his room behind him. They were shining with a light that nearly stopped him in the doorway.
    He hurt you.
    “He hurts everyone. He doesn’t seem to be able to help it. But there was something weird about him today. I don’t know what. Right now, I don’t care. But look at you, making sentences!”
    He’s… Elena paused, and for the first time since she’d first opened her eyes back in the glade where she had been resurrected, there was a frown-wrinkle on her forehead. She couldn’t make a picture. She didn’t know the right words. Something inside him. Growing inside him. Like…cold fire, dark light, she said finally. But hidden. Fire that burns from the inside out.
    Stefan tried to match this up with anything he’d heard of and came up blank. He was still humiliated that Elena had seen what had happened. “All I know that’s inside him is my blood. Along with that of half the girls in town.”
    Elena shut her eyes and shook her head slowly. Then, as if deciding not to go any further down that path, shepatted the bed beside her.
    Come, she ordered confidently, looking up. The gold in her eyes seemed especially lustrous. Let me…unhurt…the pain.
    When Stefan didn’t come immediately, she held out her arms. Stefan knew he shouldn’t go to them, but he was hurt—especially in his pride.
    He went to her and bent down to kiss her hair.

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    L ater that day Caroline was sitting with Matt Honeycutt, Meredith Sulez, and Bonnie McCullough, all