L.J. Smith recently released the first book in the Vampire Diaries the Return series (also becoming well known as

“Damon’s Trilogy”) titled NightFall. This new series focusing more on “bad boy” Damon delves into the darkest
corners of the characters mind and then amplifies them with demonic possession in NightFall. Throughout this

first book Damon terrorizes all of the humans he once cared about due to his possession…and yet we often see
glimpses of the real Damon as he fights the demons within for control. Who will ultimately win? Can Damon

make amends and find salvation in the 2nd book of “Damon’s Trilogy” Shadow Souls?

A question I’m dying to ask the author….will Damon choose Elena or Bonnie? I’m personally rooting for Bonnie;

I think she needs a strapping hot vampire to care for her…among other things.

I’ve titled this article Shadow Souls teaser because I do in fact have a teaser for you. With many emails and a little

patience L.J. Smith has given me an awesome teaser to share with my readers. I’m still pushing for an interview
so cross your fingers and wish me luck!

A Teaser for Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls

Elena and Damon reached the motel room just after midnight.

“What's wrong?" Elena sat on the bed, swinging up her legs to support her head on a pillow which sank

beneath her unsatisfactorily. She liked her pillows firm.

"Nothing." Damon was at the window, pretending to be engrossed in something beyond the shrubbery

outside.

"What nothing?"

Damon shook his head.

Elena examined the room with the too-bright vision of the seriously sleep-impaired. She must not have

really slept at all last night on her out of body adventure to see Stefan, she thought. She contemplated beige

walls, beige carpet, a beige armchair, a beige desk, and of course, a beige bedspread. Even Damon couldn’t reject
a room on the grounds that it doesn't match his basic black, she thought, and then: oh, I'm tired. And

frightened. And irritable.

And stupid. There's only one bed.

"Damon . . . " With an effort, she rolled over and sat up. "What do you want?” she said. “There's a

chair. I can sleep on the chair."

He half turned, and Elena saw in that movement the extent of his anger. The faster-than-the-human-

eye-could-follow assassin's spin and the complete muscular control that stilled it almost before it had started.

Damon with his sudden movements and his frightening stillness. He was looking out the window again, body
poised as always for . . . something. Right now it looked poised to jump.

"Vampires don't need sleep," Damon said in a voice icier and more controlled than she'd heard in a

while.

That gave Elena her first clue and the energy to get off the bed. "You know I know that's a lie."

"Take the bed, Elena." But his voice was the same. She would have expected flat, weary command.

Damon sounded more tense, more shakily-controlled than ever.

More shaken than ever.

Elena’s eyelids sank. "Is this about what happened with the tumbleweeds attacked us and we had to

strip to get the malach off?"

"No."

“Is it about what happened when you were possessed back in Fell’s Church and made to hurt me?”

“No!”

Aha.

"It is, then. You're afraid, aren't you? You're afraid that Shinichi will get past all your defenses and

possess you again. Why? Have you sensed him or heard from him?"

"Go to sleep."

"What does it take to show you that I trust you? We were just practically naked together getting those

malach off, and I didn’t mind." She was behind him now, on the beige carpet which smelled like...dust.

Her words were the dust. There was something about them that sounded hollow, wrong. But they were

true. They had been practically naked together, desperately pulling the jelly like malach off each other, and it

hadn’t once occurred to her. . .

Oh. Oh.

But she’d been so busy worrying about herself, she’d never thought about how it must be affecting him.

Especially being so close—and so upset—her aura must have been everywhere. And what could Damon have

done about it? Nothing except try not to look at her, try to block her out. . . Try to be a gentleman . . .

Not exactly his forte.

Elena sighed. She was going to have to get Damon to talk about it . . . somehow. Get him to deal with it.

Get yourself to deal with it, a voice inside her whispered.

Touching Damon was always a tricky business, with all the risks of setting off murderous instinct by

accident, even when he wasn't possessed. She reached out, very carefully, to put her fingertips on the elbow of

his leather jacket. She spoke as precisely and unemotionally as she could.

"You also know I have other senses now than the usual five. How many times do I have to say it,

Damon? I know it wasn't you torturing me and Matt last week." Despite herself, Elena heard a certain pleading
in her own voice. "I know that you’ve protected me on this trip when I was in danger. That means—a lot to me.

You may say you don't believe in the human 'sentiment' of forgiveness, but I don't think you've forgotten it. And
when you know that there is nothing to forgive in the first place—"

"This has nothing to do with that!"

The change in his voice—the force in it—hit her like a whiplash. It hurt . . . and bewildered. He was

serious. He was also under some dreadful strain, not completely unlike that of fighting the possessor, but
different.

"Damon . . . "

"Leave me alone!"

Now, where have I heard that before? Befuddled, her heart pounding, Elena groped through memories.

Oh, yes. Stefan. Stefan when they first met, when he was afraid to love her. When he was sure he would

damn her if he showed he was in love with her.

Could Damon be that much like the brother he always mocked?

"At least turn around and talk with me face to face," Elena said.

"Elena." It was a whisper, but it sounded as if Damon couldn't summon up his usual silky menace. "Go

to bed. Go to hell. Go anywhere, but stay away from me."

"You're so good at that, aren't you?" Her own voice was cold, now. Recklessly, angrily, she moved in

even closer. "At pushing people away. But I know that you've fed this morning. There's nothing you want from
me, and you can't do the starving-martyr bit half as well as Stefan—”

She had spoken the words guaranteed to incite a response of some kind, but Damon's usual response to

this sort of thing was to lounge against something and pretend to be completely indifferent or mockingly

seductive.

What happened instead was completely outside her range of her experience.

Damon whirled, caught her precisely, held her locked in an unbreakable grip. Then, with a swoop of his

head like a falcon on a mouse, he kissed her.

The kiss was hard and long and when he released her, Elena could taste salt. Tears were flowing freely

down her cheeks.

It didn’t seem to make any difference to her attacker who seemed at the mercy of raw desperation. He

was shaking like a little boy the first time he kissed his first love. That's what's driving the control away, Elena

thought fuzzily.

Her knees were going to give. . . .

Elena pushed and twisted, hurting herself deliberately against the apparently unbreakable grip that held

her.

It broke immediately.

The possessor? Shinichi again, sneaking into Damon’s mind and making him do things—?

But somehow Elena knew this wasn’t the case. No. Instead she thought . . .

. . . she thought she had just met the real Damon, the one who lived behind the shell of indifference.

And she was trembling so hard she wasn’t sure she could stand up.

She and Damon were left staring at each other, both breathing hard. Damon's sleek hair was mussed,

making him look rakish as a buccaneer. His face, always so pale and self-composed, was flushed with blood. His

eyes dropped to watch Elena automatically massaging her wrists. She could feel pins and needles now: she was
getting back some circulation. Once he'd looked away, he couldn't seem to look her in the eye again.

“I hurt you . . . again,” Damon said.

“A little. Yes.”

Eye contact. All right. Elena recognized a weapon, groping for a chair and finding the bed unexpectedly

close behind her. She didn't have many weapons right now; and she needed all of them. She gave in to the

weakness in her legs, but she kept her eyes on Damon's face. His mouth was swollen. And that was . . . unfair.
Damon's pout was a part of his most basic artillery. He had always had the most beautiful mouth she'd ever seen

on anyone, man or woman. The mouth, the hair, the half-drooping lids, the heavy lashes, the delicacy of
jawline . . . unfair, even to someone like Elena who'd long ago gotten past interest in a person because of some

accident of beauty.

But she'd never seen that mouth swollen, the perfect

hair

disordered, the eyelashes trembling because he

was looking everywhere except at her and trying not to show it.

"Was that . . . what you've been thinking about while you've been refusing to talk to me?" she asked, and

her voice was almost steady.

Damon's sudden stillness was perfection like all his other perfections. He stared at a spot in the beige

carpet that by rights ought to have broken into flames.

Then, finally, he lifted those huge dark eyes to hers. It was so hard to tell anything about Damon's eyes

because the iris was almost the same color as the pupil, but Elena had a feeling that they were dilated now so far
as to be almost all pupil. How could eyes that dark trap and hold light? She seemed to see in them a universe of

stars.

A universe of possibilities.

Damon said, softly, "Run."

Elena felt her legs tense. "The possessor?"

"No,” Damon said flatly “You should run now."

Elena felt her thigh muscles relax slightly and was grateful not to have to try to prove that she could run

—or even crawl—at this exact instant. But her fist clenched.

"You mean this is just you being a jerk?” she said. “Have you decided to hate me again? Did you enjoy—?"

Damon whirled again, stillness into motion faster than her eyes could track it. He hit the frame of the
window, once, pulling the punch almost completely at the last instant. The shatterproof glass showered like

diamonds against the darkness outside.

"That might . . . bring some people to help you." He was breathing hard now, and Elena saw to her

astonishment something she had never expected to see again.

Tears in Damon’s eyes.

She’d thought that only under the influence of her Powers to strip away the stony shell around Damon’s
heart could make him cry. But those were real teardrops trembling on Damon’s eyelashes, and he didn’t even

move when one trickled down the side of his face.

“Damon,” she said, reaching out to him, but he just shook his head.

Now that he had done all he could do to try to protect her, he didn't seem to care about keeping up

appearances. Fine tremors ran through his body. Another tear ran down his cheek.

"Damon, the window—this late, this far away from the main hotel—well I doubt that anybody will come to

help me." Elena's body was catching up with the adrenaline-spurt that had allowed her to fight her way out of
Damon's grip.

But that iron grip had broken, hadn’t it, when Elena had deliberately started to hurt herself on it?

And now it seemed they were back to square one, with Damon staring into the night and her staring at his back.

Or, at least, that was where Damon wanted them to be. But she could see that his shoulders shaking.
"You could have just asked for a kiss," Elena whispered. She didn't know if this was possible for a vampire

to understand. She still hadn't taught Stefan. Stefan went without because he didn’t understand about asking.
In all innocence and good intentions, Stefan left things until she was forced to ask him.

Damon was laughing silently, which meant that he was truly stricken. He put his hands to his face.

"I'll take that as an apology," Elena said softly.

Now Damon was laughing out loud, and Elena felt a chill. Here she was, trying to help him, and—-

"Do you think," he broke into her thoughts, "that that was all I wanted?

Elena felt herself freeze as she thought this over. Damon could easily have taken her blood while he held her
immobile. But—of course—that wasn’t all he wanted from her. Her aura . . . she knew what it did to vampires.

Damon had been protecting her all along from other vampires who might see it—and who would want her as they
hadn’t wanted a girl since they’d become creatures of darkness.

The difference, Elena’s native honesty told her, was that she didn’t give a damn about any of the others.
But Damon was different. When he kissed her she could feel the difference inside her. Something she had never

felt before . . . except with Stefan.

And Stefan—was this really her, Elena, betraying him by not running away from this situation? Damon

was being a better person than she was. He was telling her to take the temptation of her aura away from him.

So that she could start the torture anew tomorrow.

Somehow that thought, of Damon living in this terrible agony every day that she was beside him, was
unbearable.

She hadn’t spoken for a long time now. She looked up to find that Damon was watching her once again
with those great lost-child eyes.

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” he whispered.

“No.”

“You’re really not afraid of me?”

“Oh, I’m afraid, all right.” Again Elena felt that inward shiver. But she was flying somewhere now, she

had set the course, and there was no way that she could stop. Especially not when he looked at her like that. It
reminded her of the fierce joy, the exultant pride he’d shown when she’d fought the foxes with him.

“I can’t become your Princess of Darkness,” she told him. “And you know that I could never give up
Stefan.”

A ghost of his old mocking smile touched his lips. “There’s plenty of time to convince you to my way of
thinking on those matters.”

Even now, when her hands were shaking, something rose up in Elena to challenge him. “You say it’s not
the possessor. I believe you. But is all this because of what Caroline said?” She could hear the sudden hardness

in her own voice.

“Caroline?” Damon blinked as if thrown off his stride.

“Is it because you think I’m . . . easy?”

Again the utter bewilderment in Damon’s eyes. “Easy?”

Elena muttered hastily, “Never mind.”

“How can I not mind when something was said that hurt you? At least tell me what it was,” Damon said.

Elena heaved a great sigh. She might as well clear the subject up. “Caroline said that before I met Stefan I
was just—” Elena had trouble getting the last words out, but she managed. “Just a slut. An—-anybody’s slut.”

There was a pause and then Damon’s fist flashed out again, this time to the beige plaster of the wall. It
knocked a hole right through to the outside, this being an outside unit. The hole was much bigger than Damon’s

fist.

Elena felt herself floating with shock. But somewhere, deep inside her, there was birdsong.

Damon’s lips were tight and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “That meddling girl,” he said in a voice that was
half a snarl. “Caroline. She’s already fixed her destiny. If it were anyone else I might be inclined to have some

pity for her. But she goes . . . beyond . . . she’s gone beyond . . . any hope of saving . . .her. . . .” As he spoke his
words slowed, and a look of bewilderment clouded his face. He was gazing at Elena in surprise.

New tears—somehow released when the plaster in the wall had given way to the force of Damon’s self-
expression—were running freely down her cheeks. She let them; it soothed a sore place in her heart. If Stefan

had been here, he would already have been holding her, brushing her tears away with his fingers.

Very slowly, very gently, Damon reached up to brush her tears away with his fingers. First one side then

the other.

Still, Elena sat entranced, mesmerized by the darkness of his eyes and the windows of light it seemed to

hold.

And then, just as slowly, just as carefully as if he were putting some precious but fragile vase on its proper

pedestal, Damon reached out and gently drew Elena into his arms.

Elena felt one moment of anguish, of wrenching indecision. Then she buried her face in his shoulder

briefly, and came up with her head resting on Damon’s shoulder.

Just sitting. Just feeling him beside her. And still crying, tears which he continued to brush away with

fingers that touched her like butterfly wings.

They said nothing at all. Anything they said would be . . . too little, and not enough.

And then—something changed. Suddenly, Damon stopped dead, frozen in mid-motion, looking at the
tears on his fingers. Suddenly he looked bemused and he brought one of his hands up to his lips, tasting her

tears.

Whatever they tasted like to him, he didn’t seem to believe it. He brought the other hand up to his lips as

well. Elena was openly staring at him now; he should have been embarrassed—but he wasn’t. Instead a
cavalcade of expressions passed over his face, too quickly for her human eyes to catch them all. But she did see

astonishment, disbelief, bewilderment, more astonishment, and then finally a kind of joyful shock and a look
almost as if he couldn’t believe his own senses.

And then Damon laughed. It was a quick, light laugh, almost as if he was laughing at himself, but it was
genuine, euphoric, even.

Elena stared. Once again she could have sworn that there were tears in those black eyes. They caught the
light and shone from the pupils. Elena was still as deeply under their spell as ever.

“Damon,” Elena whispered, still trying to choke back her own tears—it had all happened that fast—“what is it?
What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, everything’s right,” he said, laughing aloud, while shaking his head in wonder at her.
“You should never try to fool a vampire, Elena. Vampires have many senses humans don’t—and some we don’t

even know we have until we need them. It’s taken me long enough to realize what I know about you. Because, of
course, everyone was telling me one thing, and my own mind was telling me something else. But I figured it out,

at last. I know what you really are, Elena.”

Suddenly he was bending over her, making her lean backwards, too. Those black eyes filled the universe;

they became her universe.

She could feel the surrender from the deepest part of her soul.

Except . . .

“I know your secret,” Damon whispered. “Shall I tell it to you? Or should I just do this?”

And once again he kissed her, a gentle caressing of her lips with his.

But if he knew, she thought dizzily, and he knew she knew he knew, then why . . .?

Sometimes, Damon’s telepathic voice came to her, a kiss is just a kiss . . . “ Reprinted with Author’s
permission

I hope you all enjoy the “Shadow Souls” teaser as much as I did. I certainly am dying to find out just what this
secret of Elena’s that she knows Damon knows she knows he knows …is! Keep an eye out for more articles on my

favorite author in this Welcome Back tribute series.