Phantom (23 page)

“S
top!” Elena screamed. “Stefan! Stop it! You’ll kill him!”

Even as she said it, she realized that killing Damon might be exactly what Stefan’s idea was here. Stefan tore at Damon with his teeth and hands, not pummeling him, but ripping ferally, with fangs and claws. Stefan, his body in a vicious primal crouch, his canines extended, his face distorted by a snarl of animal fury, had never looked more like a bloodthirsty vampire.

And behind Elena as she watched them, that seductive, chilling voice went on, telling Stefan that he would lose everything, just like he always lost everything. That Damon took everything from him and then tossed it carelessly, cruelly aside, because Damon simply wanted to ruin whatever Stefan had.

Elena turned and, too frightened by what Stefan was doing to Damon to have any fear left of the phantom, slammed it with her fists. After a moment, Matt and Bonnie joined her.

As before, mostly their hands just slid through the phantom’s mist. The phantom’s chest was solid, though, and Elena focused her rage on that, hitting against the hard ice there with as much power as she could.

Beneath the ice of the creature’s chest, a rose glowed a rich dark red. It was a beautiful flower, but deadly looking, its color reminding her of poisoned blood. Its thorny stem seemed swollen, thicker than a normal flower’s. As Elena stared at it, the glow deepened and the flower’s petals opened further, swelling to full bloom.
Is that her heart?
Elena wondered.
Is Stefan’s jealousy nourishing it?
She smashed her fist against the phantom’s chest again, right above the rose, and the phantom glanced at her for a moment.

“Stop it,” Elena said fiercely. “Leave Stefan alone.”

The phantom was really looking at her now, and its—no,
her—
smile widened, her glasslike teeth sharp and shiny underneath her misty lips. In the glacial depths of her eyes, Elena thought she caught a chilly but genuine twinkle, and Elena’s own heart froze.

Then the phantom turned her attention back toward Stefan and Damon, and, although Elena would never have believed it possible, things got worse.

“Damon,” said the phantom throatily, and Damon, who’d been limp and exhausted, eyes clenched shut, passive under Stefan’s assault, shielding his face but not fighting back, opened his eyes.

“Damon,” she said again, her eyes glittering. “What right does Stefan have to attack you? Whatever you tried to take from him, you were just fighting against the fact that he got everything—your father’s love, the girls you wanted—and you had nothing at all. He’s a sanctimonious brat, a self-loathing weakling, but he gets
everything
.”

Damon’s eyes widened as if in recognition at hearing his own deepest miseries voiced, and his face twisted with emotion. Stefan was still clawing and biting at him, but he fell back a little as Damon snapped into action, grabbing him by the arm and wrenching it. Elena winced with horror as she heard the crunch of something—oh, God—something in Stefan’s arm or shoulder breaking.

Undaunted, Stefan only grimaced and then threw himself at Damon again, the hurt arm dangling awkwardly. Damon was stronger, Elena numbly noted, but exhausted; surely he wouldn’t be able to keep his advantage for long. For now they seemed fairly evenly matched. They were both furious, both fighting with no reservations. A bestial, nasty snarl came from one of them, shaky, vicious laughter from the other, and Elena realized with horror that she had no idea which sound was coming from who.

The phantom hissed with enjoyment. Elena flinched away from her and, out of the corner of her eye, saw Bonnie and Matt step back, too.

“Don’t break the lines!” Alaric shouted from the other side of . . . where were they now, anyway? Oh, Mrs. Flowers’s garage—the garage. He sounded desperate, and Elena wondered if he had been shouting for a while. There had been some background noise going on, but there hadn’t been a moment to listen to it. “Elena! Bonnie! Matt! Don’t break the lines!” he shouted again. “You can get out, but step over the lines carefully!”

Elena glanced down. An elaborate pattern of lines in different colors was chalked beneath their feet, and she, Bonnie, Matt, and the phantom were all together in a small circle in the innermost center of this pattern.

Bonnie was the first one to clearly realize what Alaric was saying. “Come on,” she muttered, yanking at Elena’s and Matt’s arms. Then she picked her way, daintily but quickly, across the floor, away from the phantom and toward their friends. Matt followed her. He had to pause on one foot in a small section and reach with his other foot, and there was a moment when he wobbled, one sneaker almost blurring a blue line of chalk. But he caught his balance and continued on.

It took Elena, still mostly focused on the desperately grappling figures of Damon and Stefan, a few seconds longer to realize she needed to move as well. She was almost too late. As she poised herself to take that first step out of the inner circle, the phantom turned its glassy eyes upon her.

Elena fled, jumping quickly out of the circle and just barely managing to stop herself from skidding across the diagram. The phantom took a swipe at her, but its hand stopped before crossing above a chalk line, and it growled in frustration.

Alaric shakily pushed his tousled hair out of his eyes. “I wasn’t sure whether that would hold her,” he admitted, “but it seems like it’s working. Now, carefully, Elena, watching where you step, make your way over here.” Matt and Bonnie had already reached the wall of the garage, at a distance from where Stefan and Damon were locked in battle, and Meredith had wrapped her arms around them, her dark head buried in Matt’s shoulder, Bonnie nestled against her side, her eyes as round as a frightened kitten’s.

Elena looked down at the complicated pattern drawn on the floor and started moving carefully between the lines, heading not for her other friends but for the two struggling vampires.

“Elena! No! This way!” called Alaric, but Elena ignored him. She had to get to Damon and Stefan.

“Please,” she said, half sobbing, as she reached them, “Damon, Stefan, you have to stop. The phantom’s doing this to you. You don’t really want to hurt each other. It’s not you.
Please.
”

Neither of them paid any attention to her. She wasn’t even sure whether they could hear her. They were almost motionless now, their muscles straining in each other’s grip as each tried to simultaneously attack and fend off the other. Slowly, as Elena watched, Damon began to overcome Stefan, gradually pushing his arms aside, leaning in toward his throat, white teeth flashing.

“
Damon! No!
” Elena screamed. She stretched out to grab his arm, to pull him off Stefan. Without even looking at her, he casually, viciously shoved her aside, sending her flying.

She landed hard on her back and slid across the floor, and it
hurt
, the impact jolting her teeth together, banging her head against the cement, white shocks of pain flaring behind her eyes. As she started to get up again, she saw with dismay Damon push through the last of Stefan’s defenses and sink his fangs into his younger brother’s neck.

“No!” she screamed again. “Damon, no!”

“Elena, be careful,” Alaric shouted. “You’re in the diagram. Please, whatever you do, don’t break any more lines.”

Elena looked around. Her landing had sent her skidding through several of the chalk marks, which were now smeared all around her, smudges of color. She stiffened in terror and suppressed a whimper. Was
it
loose now? Had she set it free?

Steeling herself, she turned toward the innermost circle.

The phantom was feeling around itself with its long arms, patting up and down against some invisible wall bordering the circle that kept it contained. As Elena watched, its mouth thinned with effort and it brought its hands together in one spot and
pushed.

The air in the room rippled.

But the phantom did not manage to break through the circle, and after a moment it stopped pushing and hissed in disappointment.

Then its eyes fell on Elena, and it smiled again.

“Oh, Elena,” it said, its voice soft with false compassion. “The pretty girl, the one everyone wants, the one the boys all fight over. It’s so very hard being you.” The voice twisted, its tone changing to bitter mockery. “But they’re not really thinking of you, are they? The two you want, you’re not the girl for them. You know why they are attracted to you. Katherine. Always Katherine. They want you because you look like her, but you’re not her. The girl they loved so long ago was soft and sweet and gentle. An innocent, a victim, a foil for their fantasies. You’re nothing like her. They’ll find that out, you know. Once your mortal form changes—and it will. They’ll be the same forever, but you’re changing and getting older every day; in a few years you’ll look much older than they do—then they’ll realize you’re not the one they love at all. You’re not Katherine, and you never will be.”

Elena’s eyes stung. “Katherine was a monster,” she spat out through her teeth.

“She
became
a monster. She started out as a sweet young girl,” the phantom corrected her. “Damon and Stefan destroyed her. Like they’ll destroy you. You’ll never lead a normal life. You’re not like Meredith or Bonnie or Celia. They’ll have chances at normalcy when they’re ready, despite the way you’ve dragged them into your battles. But you, you’ll never be normal. And you know who’s to blame for that, don’t you?”

Elena, without thinking, looked at Damon and Stefan, just as Stefan managed to shove Damon away from him. Damon staggered backward, toward the group of humans huddling by the wall of the garage. Blood was running from his mouth and streaming down Stefan’s neck from a terrible gash.

“They’ve doomed you, just like they doomed the one they
really
loved,” the phantom said softly.

Elena pushed herself to her feet, her heart pounding hard, heavy with misery and anger.

“Elena, stop!” called a powerful contralto voice, filled with such authority that Elena turned away from Damon and Stefan and, blinking as though she’d been woken from a dream, looked out of the diagram toward the others.

Mrs. Flowers stood at the edge of the chalk lines, hands on her hips, feet planted firmly. Her lips were a straight angry line, but her eyes were clear and thoughtful. She met Elena’s gaze, and Elena felt calmed and strengthened. Then Mrs. Flowers looked around at the others gathered beside her.

“We must perform the banishing spell
now
,” she declared. “Before the phantom manages to destroy us all. Elena! Can you hear me?”

A surge of purpose running through her, Elena nodded and moved back to join the others.

Mrs. Flowers brought her hands sharply together, and the air rippled again. The phantom’s voice broke off and it shrieked in fury, shoving at the air around it, its hands meeting resistance sooner, its invisible prison smaller.

Meredith felt urgently around on the high shelf near the garage door, her hands touching and rejecting various objects. Where had Mrs. Flowers put the candles? Paintbrushes, no. Flashlights, no. Ancient can of bug spray, no. Bag of potting soil, no. Some weird metal thing that she couldn’t figure out from touching what it might be, no.

Bag of candles. Yes.

“I’ve got it,” she said, pulling it off the shelf and dumping probably a decade’s worth of dust from the shelf onto her own head. “Urgh,” she sputtered.

It was a mark of the seriousness of the situation, Meredith thought, that Bonnie and Elena both looked at her, head and shoulders coated in thick dust and spiderwebs, and neither giggled nor moved to brush her off. They all had more important things to worry about than a little dirt.

“Okay,” she said. “First off, we need to figure out what color candle Damon would be.” Mrs. Flowers had pointed out that Damon was clearly a victim of the jealousy phantom as well, and so would have to take part in the banishment ritual for it to work fully.

Looking at the two vampire brothers still attempting to tear each other apart, Meredith seriously doubted whether Damon would be participating. Stefan either, for that matter. They were solely focused on inflicting as much damage as possible on each other. Still, they would have to get the two vampires back to make the spell work.

Somehow.

Meredith found herself coolly wondering whether, if both Damon and Stefan died, they could safely be counted out of the ritual. Would the rest of them be able to defeat the phantom then? And if they didn’t murder each other, but simply continued to fight, endangering them all, would she be able to kill them? She shoved the thought away. Stefan was her
friend.

And then she determinedly made herself consider killing him again. This was her
duty.
That was more important than friendship; it had to be.

Yes, she could kill them today, even in the next few minutes, if it was necessary, she realized. She would regret it forever if she had to, but she could.

Besides, a part of her mind noted clinically, if things went on as they were now, Damon and Stefan would kill each other, and save her that burden.

Elena had been thinking hard—or maybe zoning out, focused on what the jealousy phantom had said to her, Meredith wasn’t sure—and now she spoke. “Red,” she said. “Is there a red candle for Damon?”

There was a dark red candle, and also a black one. Meredith pulled both out and showed them to Elena.

“Red,” said Elena.

“For blood?” asked Meredith, eyeing the fighters, now only about ten feet away. God, they were both just
covered
with blood now. As she watched, Damon growled like an animal and banged Stefan’s head repeatedly against the wall of the garage. Meredith winced at the hollow sound of Stefan’s skull slamming against the wood and plaster of the wall. Damon had one hand around Stefan’s neck, the other ripping at Stefan’s chest as if Damon wanted to gouge out his heart.

A soft, sinister voice was still coming from the phantom. Meredith couldn’t make out what it was saying, but its eyes were on the brothers, and it was smiling as it spoke. It looked satisfied.