Phantom (25 page)

Elena paused for breath, and to gauge what effect, if any, her speech was having on the brothers. At least they weren’t currently trying to kill each other. That had to be a good sign. They stared at each other now, their faces unreadable. Damon licked the blood from his lips. Stefan reached up and carefully ran his free hand over the torn skin on his face and chest. Neither one said a word. Was there a connection left between them? Damon was looking at the cuts on Stefan’s neck with an almost soft expression in his black eyes.

Elena let go of them and threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said. “If you can’t forgive each other, then just think about this. The phantom
wants
you to fight. It wants you to kill each other, to hate each other. Your jealousy is what’s feeding it. One thing I know about you—about
both
of you—is that you’ve never given your enemies anything they wanted, not even if it would have saved you. Are you going to give in to what this phantom, this manipulative monster, wants? Is it going to control you, or are
you
going to control you? Does either of you really want to murder your brother for someone
else
?”

At the same exact moment, Damon and Stefan blinked.

After a few seconds, Stefan cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m glad you’re not dead after all,” he offered.

The corner of Damon’s mouth twitched. “I’m relieved I didn’t manage to kill you today, little brother,” he answered.

Apparently, that was all they had to say. They held each other’s eyes for a beat longer, then turned to Elena.

“So,” said Damon, and he was beginning to smile, a wild, reckless smile that Elena recognized. Damon the unstoppable, Damon the antihero, was back. “How do we kill this bitch?”

Mrs. Flowers and the phantom were still locked in their silent, almost motionless battle. Mrs. Flowers was beginning to lose ground to the phantom, though. The phantom’s stance was wider; its arms had spread out. It was gradually gaining the power to move, and Mrs. Flowers’s hands and arms were shaking with strain. Her face was pale, and the lines of age around her mouth seemed deeper.

“We have to hurry,” Elena said to Damon and Stefan. They skirted around Mrs. Flowers and the phantom, and joined the others who, white-faced and wary, were watching them approach. In front of them, only two candles still burned.

“Stefan,” Elena said. “Go.”

Stefan stared down at the dark blue candle still burning on the floor of the garage. “I’ve been jealous of everyone lately, it seems,” he said, the shame evident in his tone. “I’ve been jealous of Matt, whose life seems so simple and good to me, who I know could have taken Elena out of the shadows and given her the uncomplicated life she deserves. I was jealous of Caleb, who seemed like the kind of golden boy who would be a good match for Elena, so much so that I distrusted him even before I had reason to, because I thought he was after her. And especially, I was jealous of Damon.”

His gaze left the candle and settled on his brother’s face. Damon looked back at him with an inscrutable expression. “I suppose I’ve always been jealous of him. The phantom was telling the truth when she said that. When we were alive, he was older, faster, stronger, more sophisticated than I was. When we died”—Stefan’s lips curled up in a bitter smile of remembrance—“things only got worse. And, even more recently, when Damon and I found we could work together, I’ve resented how close he was to Elena. He has a piece of her that I’m not a part of, and it’s hard not to be jealous of that.”

Stefan sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “The thing is, though, I love my brother. I do.” He looked up at Damon. “I love you. I always have, even when we were at our worst. Even when all we wanted to do was kill each other. Elena’s right: We’re more than the bad parts of ourselves. I have fed the phantom of jealousy, but now I cast my jealousy away.”

The blue candle flickered and went out. Elena was watching the phantom closely, and saw the rose in its torso dull for a moment. The phantom flinched and snarled, then renewed its struggle against Mrs. Flowers’s spell. As it gave a powerful twist, the older woman staggered backward.

“Now!” Elena muttered quietly to Damon, looking at him meaningfully and wishing more than ever that she had her powers of telepathy.
Distract her,
she hoped her eyes said.

Damon nodded once, as if to say he understood her message, then cleared his throat theatrically, drawing every eye to him, and picked up the dark red candle, the last one burning in the line. He dabbed a line of his blood down its length and spent a few seconds posed with his head lowered pensively, his long, dark eyelashes brushing his cheeks. He was milking the moment for every drop of drama.

Once every eye was fixed on him, Elena touched Stefan and indicated for him to help her approach the phantom from either side.

“I have been jealous,” Damon intoned, staring down at the flame of the candle he held. He flicked his eyes up quickly at Elena, and she nodded encouragingly.

“I have been jealous,” he repeated, frowning. “I have coveted that which my brother has, over and over again.”

Elena slipped closer to the phantom, coming up beside it on its right side. She could see that Stefan was inching nearer on its left.

Mrs. Flowers saw them, too. Elena could tell, because the older woman raised her eyebrows fractionally and began to mutter her spell more loudly and fiercely. Damon’s voice rose, too, everyone in the room competing for Jealousy’s attention, to keep it from noticing Stefan and Elena’s machinations.

“I don’t need to go into every single detail of my past,” Damon said, his familiar smirk appearing on his battered face, a smirk that Elena found oddly reassuring. “I think there’s been enough of that here today. Suffice it to say there are things I . . . regret. Things that I would like to be different in the future.” He paused dramatically for a moment, his head thrown back proudly. “And so I admit that I have fed the phantom of jealousy. And now I cast jealousy
out.
”

In the moment that Damon’s candle went out—and thank God it
had
gone out, Elena thought; Damon was apt to cling to his worst impulses—the rose in the phantom’s chest dulled again to a dark pink. Jealousy snarled and wobbled ever so slightly on its feet. At that same instant, Stefan lunged for the cut across the phantom’s chest and got his hand inside it, inside the phantom’s torso, and grabbed for the rose.

A gout of green, viscous fluid spurted from the wound as Stefan squeezed the rose, and then the phantom screamed, a long, unearthly howl that made all the humans flinch. Bonnie clapped her hands over her ears, and Celia moaned.

For a moment, Elena thought they were going to win that easily—that by attacking the rose at the phantom’s heart, Stefan had defeated it. But then the phantom steadied itself and, with a huge flexing of muscle, pulled suddenly out of Mrs. Flowers’s control, and in one smooth motion ripped Stefan away from its side, his hand coming empty out of its chest, and threw him across the garage.

Stefan hit the wall with a muffled thump, slid to the floor, and lay still. Evidently exhausted by her battle with the phantom, Mrs. Flowers also sagged backward, and Matt rushed to catch her in his arms before she hit the ground.

The phantom smiled slowly at Damon, showing its sharp teeth. Its glacier-clear eyes glittered.

“It’s time to go, Damon,” Jealousy said softly. “You’re the strongest one here. The best of all of them, the best of anyone. But they’ll always fawn over Stefan, the weakling, the brat, your useless baby brother. No matter what you do, no one will ever care for you the way these mortals do for him. The way everyone, for hundreds of years, has always cared for Stefan. You should leave them behind. Make them suffer. Why not leave them in danger? They’d do the same to you. Elena and her friends traveled through dimensions, faced slavery, braved the greatest perils, to save
Stefan
, but they left you lying dead, far from home. They came back here and were happy without you. What loyalty do you owe them?”

Damon, his face in shadow now that all the candles were out, gave a dark, bitter little laugh. His black eyes gleamed in the dimness, fixed on the phantom’s clear ones. There was a long silence, and Elena’s breath caught in her throat.

Damon stepped forward, still holding his candle. “Don’t you remember?” he said, his voice cool. “I cast you
out.
”

And with superhuman quickness, before anyone could even blink, he lit his candle again with a flick of Power and threw it, straight and true, directly into the phantom’s face.

E
lena leaped backward as the phantom caught fire. She was so close that the heat of the flames burned her cheeks, and she could smell her own hair smoking.

Shielding her face with her hands, she eased her way forward as silently and sneakily as she could, closer and closer to the phantom. Her legs shook, but she willed them still and steady.

She was consciously
not
letting herself look at or think about Stefan’s body crumpled on the floor of the garage, in the same way she had kept herself from looking at Damon and Stefan’s fight when she needed to think.

Suddenly a burst of flames shot into the air, and for one dazzling second, Elena dared to hope that Damon had done it. The phantom was
burning
. Surely no creature of ice could withstand that.

But then she realized that the phantom was not only burning. She was also laughing.

“You fool,” the phantom said to Damon, in a soft and almost tender voice. “You think fire can hurt
me
? Jealousy can burn hotter than fire as well as colder than ice. You of all people should know that, Damon.” She laughed her strange clinking laugh. “I can feel the jealousy, the anger that burns in you all the time, Damon, and it burns so hot I can smell the hatred and despair that live in you, and your little petty hurts and rages are meat and drink to me. You clutch them to you and pore over them like treasure. You may have succeeded in casting out a tiny piece of the multitudes of hurts that burden you, but you’ll never be free of me.”

Around the phantom’s feet, tiny blue lines of flame ignited and spread quickly across the floor of the garage. Elena watched in horror: Were these burning traces of oil left by Mrs. Flowers’s ancient car? Or was it simply the phantom’s maliciousness made solid, spreading fire among them?

It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the garage was on fire, and while the phantom might be impervious to the flames, the rest of them weren’t. Smoke filled the musty space, and Elena and her friends began to cough. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand.

Streaking past Elena, Damon snarled and leaped for the phantom’s throat.

Even in their current dire situation, Elena couldn’t help admiring Damon’s speed and grace. He collided with the phantom and knocked it to the floor, then recoiled, protecting his face with his leather-clad arm.
Fire
, Elena remembered with a frisson of terror.
Fire is one of the few things that can kill a vampire.

Her eyes watered from the smoke, but she forced them to stay open as she moved closer, circling around behind the phantom, who was back on its feet. She could hear her friends shouting, but she concentrated on the fight.

The phantom was moving more awkwardly than it had been earlier, and did not immediately attack Damon. Through the flames, Elena could see that thick greenish fluid was still trickling down its solid torso from the wound Meredith had given it. Where the liquid touched the flames, they flickered with a greenish blue tint.

Damon lunged for the phantom again, and it flung him off with a shrug. Snarling, they circled each other warily. Elena skittered around behind them, trying to stay out of Damon’s way, trying to see how she could help.

A crackling from across the room distracted Elena for a second, and she glanced back to see fire climbing the far wall, reaching for the wooden shelves set around the room. She missed seeing what exactly happened next, but suddenly Damon was skidding across the floor on his back, an angry red burn glowing on his cheek.

He was up again in a second and prowling back toward the phantom, but his eyes had a slightly wild glint to them that made Elena nervous. Even injured, the phantom was stronger than Damon, and, after his long fight with Stefan, Damon’s reserves must be waning. He was growing reckless. Elena gathered her courage and moved closer to the phantom again, as close to the flames as she could stand. The phantom glanced back at her for a second and then away, focusing on the stronger threat.

It sprang forward to meet Damon, its fiery arms spread wide and a savagely joyous smile on its face.

And suddenly Meredith was there beside Damon. She looked solemn and pale as a young martyr, her lips tight and her eyes wary, but she moved as fast as lightning. Her stave sliced through the air almost too quickly to see, leaving another long cut across the phantom’s stomach. The phantom howled, and the flames on its torso hissed as more greenish fluid gushed from the wound.

But the phantom remained upright. It snarled and reached for Meredith, who danced rapidly backward, just out of range. Meredith and Damon exchanged a wordless look and moved to flank the phantom, one on either side, so that it couldn’t watch both of them at once. Damon cuffed Jealousy, a short, intense blow, and pulled back a reddish, blistering hand. Meredith swung her stave again, nearly catching the phantom on the arm but instead cleaving only a wisp of smoke.

There was a crash as a burning shelf collapsed onto the floor. The smoke grew thicker. Away from the fight, Elena could hear Bonnie and Matt coughing.

Elena moved closer still, again coming toward the phantom from behind, safely out of Meredith and Damon’s way. The phantom’s heat was like a bonfire.

Meredith and Damon were moving in tandem now, as smoothly as if they had rehearsed, dancing in and back, sometimes catching the phantom with a blow, more often passing through a curl of smoke or mist as the phantom transformed its parts from solid to airy shapes.

A voice rang out. “
Impera te desistere
.” Mrs. Flowers leaned against the supporting arms of Matt and Alaric. But her eyes were clear and her voice was steady. Power crackled in the air around her.

The phantom slowed only slightly in its fight, perhaps no more than a half second behind in its thrusts and transformations. But this was enough to make at least a little difference. More of Damon’s and Meredith’s blows landed, and they were able to dodge a few more of the phantom’s.

Was it enough, though? The phantom flinched when a punch hit home, and it bled horrible green goo where the stave cut it, but it was still steady on its feet as Meredith and Damon hacked and choked in the smoke and stumbled away from the flames. The rose in Jealousy’s chest pulsed a steady dark red. Elena exhaled in frustration and immediately began to cough again. The phantom wasn’t staying in one place long enough for Elena to get a good shot at grabbing the rose-heart.

Meredith sliced at it with her fighting stave, and this time the stave slid through smoke, and the phantom grabbed the stave in one hand, swinging Meredith toward Damon. Colliding, they both fell heavily to the ground, and the phantom, still slightly hobbled by Mrs. Flowers’s spell, strained toward them.

“I’ve envied Meredith for her brains!” shouted Bonnie. Her face was smudged with smoke and tears, and she looked incredibly small and fragile, but she was standing straight-backed and proud, yelling at the top of her lungs. “I know I’ll never be as good at school as she is, but that’s okay. I cast my jealousy out!”

The phantom’s rose dimmed to a dark pink for a moment, and it staggered ever so slightly. It glanced at Bonnie and hissed. It was only a tiny pause in the phantom’s advance, but it was enough for Damon to spring to his feet. He stepped in front of Meredith, shielding her as she clambered up. Without even looking at each other, Meredith and Damon began circling in opposite directions again. “I’ve been jealous that my friends have more money than I do!” Matt shouted, “but I cast the jealousy out!”

“I envy the way Alaric truly believed in something unproven, and turned out to be right!” Celia yelled. “But I cast it out!”

“I’ve envied Elena’s clothes!” Bonnie cried. “I’m too short to look good in lots of things! But I cast that out!”

Damon kicked at the phantom, pulling his smoldering leg back quickly. Meredith swung her stave. Mrs. Flowers chanted in Latin, and Alaric joined her, his low voice in counterpoint to hers, reinforcing her spell. Bonnie, Celia, and Matt kept shouting: dredging up small jealousies and hurts that they were probably usually hardly aware of, casting them out to pepper the phantom with tiny blows.

And for the first time, the phantom looked . . . baffled. It swung its head slowly from one to another of its opponents: Damon stalking toward it, fists raised; Meredith, her stave swinging surely as she watched the phantom with a cool and considering gaze; Alaric and Mrs. Flowers reciting strings of Latin words, hands lifted; Bonnie, Matt, and Celia shouting confessions as if they were throwing rocks at it.

Jealousy’s glassy eyes passed over Elena without really seeming to notice her: Standing still and quiet among the entire hubbub, she was not a threat.

This was the best chance Elena was going to get. She nerved herself to move forward, then froze as the phantom turned toward her.

Then, miraculously, Stefan was there. He grappled at the phantom’s back, throwing one arm around its neck as the flames licked at him. His shirt caught fire. The phantom, briefly, was pulled backward past Elena, its torso toward her, unprotected.

Without hesitation, Elena plunged her hand into the fire.

For a moment, she barely felt the flames, just a gentle, almost cool touch against her hand as the flames flickered around her.
Not so bad,
she had a moment to think, and then she felt the pain.

It was pure and agonizing, and dark fireworks of shock went off behind her eyes. She had to fight to overcome the almost irresistible instinct to pull her hand back out of the fire. Instead, she groped at the phantom’s torso, searching for the cut Meredith had made just above its rose. It was slippery and smooth, and her hand fumbled.
Where is it? Where is it?

Damon had thrown himself into the flames alongside Stefan, yanking at the phantom’s arms and neck, keeping its torso clear for Elena, preventing the phantom from ripping free and throwing her across the room. Meredith beat at Jealousy’s side with her stave. Behind her, her friends’ voices rose in a babble of confessions and spells as they did their part to keep the phantom off balance and disoriented.

At last Elena’s hand found the cut and she
pushed
inside. It was icy cold in the phantom’s chest, and Elena yelped at the contrast—the cold was excruciating after the heat, and the flames still licked at her wrist and arm. The freezing liquid inside the phantom’s chest was so thick, it was like feeling through gelatin. Elena shoved and reached, and the phantom screamed with pain.

It was a horrible sound and, despite all that the phantom had done to her and her friends, Elena could not help flinching in sympathy. A moment later, Elena’s hand closed on the rose’s stem and a thousand thorns pierced her burned flesh. Ignoring the pain, she pulled the rose out of the freezing liquid, out of the fire, and staggered backward, away from the phantom.

She didn’t know what she’d expected to happen, exactly. For the phantom to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, perhaps, leaving nothing but a puddle of vile greenish water. Instead, the phantom stared at her, its mouth open, its pointed, shining teeth on full display. The tear in its chest had expanded, and fluid oozed rapidly, like an untended faucet. The flames burned low and green where the liquid tracked down its body and dripped to the floor.

“Give it to me,” Stefan said, appearing at Elena’s side. He took the rose from her hand and ripped at its petals, now fading to a lighter pink, and scattered the petals into the fire burning up the sides of the garage.

The phantom watched with a stunned expression, and gradually its blazing fire thinned to smoke, its solid form slowly vaporizing. For a moment, a smoky, malevolent image hung in the air before them, its eyes fixed sullenly upon Elena. And then it was gone.