Children Of The Damned

Damon

She drug her sleeves under her eyes, wiping away the tears, embarrassed I had seen her crying.

“No, Damon. I do not need a ride from you,” she snapped, but I could her the tears in her voice, which broke mid-sentence.

“You got a ride here from Matt, didn’t you?”

She stayed stubbornly silent, and I unlocked my car.

“Get in. I’ll take you home.”

She crossed her arms, her feet remaining planted solidly on the ground beneath her. So, she was stubborn.

“Stop being so stubborn and noble. I get it, I’m a very bad man. You need to stay away. Now get in before the cps show up.”

When I said “cops”, she seemed to rethink her options, and got in the passenger seat, while I held open the door for her.

As I drove off, taking the long way to her house, she struggled to keep from crying.

“So, you and Matt Donovan, huh?”

“Can we not talk about him right now?” He could have been killed. I should have stayed with him. I could have helped.”

I remembered what Caroline had told me. She wouldn’t feel better until I somehow lifted the guilt from her shoulders from not having stayed behind with Matt and tried to help him.

“There was nothing you could have done, and don’t bother beating yourself up thinking otherwise.”

She was silent for a while, and then she wiped her eyes again with frustration. She didn’t want to seem weak. That, I understood.

“What could have done that to him. His throat…” she thought out loud, and shuddered.

If only she knew that it wasn’t an animal attack like the council members tried to tell everyone to cover it up. If only she knew that it was someone very much like me, someone not human.

It didn’t take long before I realized she smelled like him. They had to have been in contact for most of the night for that to have happened. I felt a flame of jealousy blossom in my gut, and I doused it before I could let it take over.

Instead, I thought about something else that for whatever reason, only managed to make me more angry. Ana had a stalker back in California. She had been in danger. I had the fleeting idea to take a trip to California and sort it out for her.

However, there were more pressing matters at hand. While Ana sat quietly in the passenger seat, I sifted through the list of vampires that would have attacked Matt. It was a short list….a really, really short list. In fact, the only vampires that would have attacked him were killed after all the tomb vampires were killed on Founder’s Day. Which meant the vampire that attacked Matt was new in town. And apparently he didn’t know the Salvatore brothers, or the danger they could be if anyone thought to attack people in this town, especially people we were close to. Although I couldn’t even begin to say that Matthew Donovan meant anything to me, he meant something to Ana. And that was good enough for me.

I still hadn’t really let myself think about what Ana might mean to me if I was willing to protect her, and go out of my way to do so. Stefan would probably say something ridiculous, like my human side was shining through and that Ana brought that out in me, but I begged to differ.

In truth, I wanted Ana for myself, and I wasn’t about to let anyone jeopardize that for me, especially not some silly out-of-towner vampire who was too stupid to know not to go around chewing on the town’s star quarterback.

I pulled up to her house and stopped.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, brushing some of her hair behind her hair, and the smell that wafted over to me was amazing. She smelled like roses…and vanilla.

I just smirked, not really having anything to say. She got out of the car, but stopped, standing there, clutching her purse like a lifeline.

“Oh, Damon?”

“Yes,” I said in an exasperated tone. “Ana?” My eyes flashed, and she stopped breathing for a couple of heartbeats.

“I don’t think all this is real,” she said, waving her hand in my general direction.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her as if she had just said something preposterous, like I had three heads or liked to ride unicorns on my free time.

“I don’t think you are as bad as everyone makes you out to be. Otherwise…you would have just left me there at the party for the cops to find.”

“You don’t know anything. Goodnight, Ana,” I said, slamming the passenger door shut behind her, driving off into the night.