Chapter 44

Elena was wakened by shouting. She'd already once awakened to unbelievable bliss. Now she was awake again - but surely that was Damon's voice. Shouting? Damon didn't shout!

Throwing on a robe, she went dashing out the door and downstairs.

Raised voices - confusion. Damon was kneeling on the floor. His face was blue-white. There wasn't a plant in the room that could be strangling him.

Poisoned, was the next thing Elena thought and immediately her eyes darted around the room to see a spilled drink, a dropped plate, any sign that poison had done this. There was nothing.

Sage was clapping Damon on the back. Oh, God, could he have choked? But that was idiocy. Vampires didn't breathe, except for talking and building Power.

But then what was happening?

"You have to breathe," Sage was shouting in Damon's ear. "Take a breath, as if you were going to speak, but then hold on to it, as if for raising your Power. Think about your insides. Get those lungs working!"

The words only confused Elena.

"There!" cried Sage. "You see?"

"But it only lasts an instant. Then I need to do it again."

"But, yes, that is the point!"

"I tell you I'm dying and you laugh at me?" a disheveled Damon shouted. "I'm blind, deaf, my senses are haywire - and you laugh!"

Disheveled, thought Elena, bothered by something.

"Well." Sage seemed to be at least trying not to laugh. "Perhaps, mon petit chou, you should not have opened something that was not addressed to you?"

"I put wards all around me before I did it. The house was safe."

"But you were not - breathe! Breathe, Damon!"

"It looked completely harmless - and admit it - we were all going - to open it last night - when we got too tired - !"

"But to do it alone, to open a present from a kitsune...that was foolish, yes?"

A choking Damon snapped, "Don't lecture me. Help me. Why am I muffled in cotton wool? Why can't I see? Or hear? Or smell - anything? I'm telling you I can't smell a thing!"

"You are fit and sharp as any human could be. You could probably defeat most vampires if you fought with one right now. But human senses are very few and very dull."

Words were swimming in Elena's head...opening things not addressed to you...bouquet from a kitsune...human...

Oh, my God!

Apparently, the same words were going through the mind of someone else, because suddenly a figure dashed in from the kitchen area. Stefan.

"You stole my bouquet? From the kitsune?"

"I was very careful - "

"Do you realize what you've done?" Stefan shook Damon.

"Ow. That hurts! Do you want to break my neck?"

"That hurts? Damon, you're in for a world of hurt! Do you understand? I talked to that kitsune. Told him the whole story of my life. Elena came to visit and he saw her practically...well, never mind - he saw her crying over me! Do...you...realize...what...you...have... done?"

It was as if Stefan had started climbing a series of steps, and that each one lifted him to a higher level of fury than the last. And here, at the top...

"I'll KILL YOU!" Stefan shouted. "You took it - my humanity! He gave it to me -  and you took it!"

"You'll kill me? I'll kill you, you - you bastard! There was one flower in the middle. A black rose, bigger than I have ever seen. And it smelled...heavenly..."

"It's gone!" Matt reported, producing the bouquet. He displayed it. There was a gaping hole in the center of the mixed flower arrangement.

Despite the hole, Stefan ran to it, and stuck his face into the bouquet, sucking in great heaving breaths of air. He kept coming up and

snapping his fingers and each time lightning flared between his fingertips.

"Sorry, bud," Matt said. "I think it's gone."

Elena could see it all now. That kitsune...he was one of the good ones, like the stories Meredith had told them about. Or at least good enough to sympathize with Stefan's plight. And so, when he had gotten free, he had made up a bouquet - kitsune could do anything with plants, although surely this was a great feat, something like finding the secret of eternal youth...to turn vampires into humans. And after Stefan had endured and endured and endured and should have finally gotten his reward...right now...

"I'm going back," Stefan shouted. "I'm going to find him!"

Meredith said quietly, "With or without Elena?"

Stefan stopped. He looked up at the stairway, and his eyes met Elena's.

Elena...

We'll go together.

"No," Stefan shouted. "I would never put you through that. I'm not going after all. I'm just going to murder you!" He swung back on his brother.

"Been there, done that. Besides, I'm the one that's going to kill you, you bastard! You took my world away from me! I am a vampire! I'm not a" - some creative cursing - "human!"

"Well you are now," Matt said. He was just barely not laughing out loud. "So I'd say you'd better get used to it."

Damon leaped at Stefan. Stefan didn't step aside. In an instant there was a ball of thrashing, kicking, and punching, and cursing in Italian that made it sound as if there were at least four vampires fighting five or six humans.

Elena sat down helplessly.

Damon...a human?

How were they going to deal with this?

Elena looked up to see that Bonnie had carefully made up a tray of all sorts of things that tasted good to humans, and that she'd undoubtedly done it for Damon before he had worked his way into hysteria.

"Bonnie," Elena said quietly, "don't give it to him yet. He'll just throw it at you. But perhaps later..."

"Later he won't throw it?"

Elena winced.

"How is Damon going to deal with being human?" she asked herself aloud.

Bonnie looked at the cursing, spitting ball of vampire/human fury.

"I'd say...kicking and screaming the whole way."

Just then Mrs. Flowers came out of the kitchen. She had a huge mound of fluffy waffles stacked on several plates on a tray. She saw the rolling, swearing, snarling ball that was Stefan and Damon.

"Oh, my," she said. "Did something go wrong?"

Elena looked at Bonnie. Bonnie looked at Meredith. Meredith looked at Elena.

"You...could say so," gasped Elena.

And then the three of them gave way to it. Gales and gales of helpless laughter.

You've lost a powerful ally, said a voice in Elena's mind. Do you know that? Can you foresee the consequences? Today, when you have just come back from a world of Shinichis?

We'll win, Elena thought. We have to.

( The end )

Chapter 43

Elena had a feeling she couldn't quite describe. It wasn't letdown. It was...let up. For what seemed like most of her life she had been searching for Stefan.

But now she had him back again, quite safe and clean (he'd had a long bath while she insisted on scrubbing him gently with all sorts of brushes and pumice stones, and then a shower, and then a rather cramped shower with her). His hair was drying into the silky soft dark shock - a little longer than he usually kept it - that she knew. He hadn't had energy for frivolities like keeping his hair short and clean before. Elena understood that.

And now...there were no guards or kitsune around to spy on them. There was nothing to keep them from each other. They had been playful in the shower, splashing each other, Elena always making sure to keep her feet on the no-slip guard and ready to try to support Stefan's lanky weight. But they could not be playful now.

The shower's spray had been very helpful, too - at concealing the teardrops that kept flowing down Elena's cheeks. She could - oh, dear heaven - count and feel each one of his ribs. He was just bones and skin, her beautiful Stefan, but his green eyes were alive, sparkling and dancing in his pale face.

After they were dressed in nightclothes they simply sat on the bed for a little while. Sitting together, both breathing - Stefan had got into the habit from being around humans so much and, recently, from trying to eke out the small amount of nutrition he received - in synchronicity, and both feeling the other's warm body beside them...it was almost too much. Then, almost tentatively, Stefan groped for Elena's hand, and catching it, held it in both of his, turning it over wonderingly.

Elena was swallowing and swallowing, trying to make a start in a conversation, felt herself practically radiating bliss. Oh, I never want anything more, she thought, although she knew that soon enough she would want to talk, and to hold, and to kiss, and to feed Stefan. But if someone had asked her if she would have accepted just this, sitting together, communicating by touch and love alone, she would have accepted it.

Before she knew it, she was talking, words that came like bubbles out of molasses, only these were bubbles from her soul. "I thought that somehow I might lose this time. That I'd won so many times, and that this time something would teach me a lesson and you...wouldn't make it."

Stefan was still wondering over her hand, bending industriously to kiss each separate finger. "You call 'winning' dying in pain and sunlight to save my worthless life - and my even more worthless brother's?"

"I call this a better kind of winning," Elena admitted. "Any time we get to be together is winning. Any moment - even in that dungeon..."

Stefan winced, but Elena had to finish her thought. "Even there, to look in your eyes, to touch your hand, to know that you were looking at me and touching me - and that you were happy - well, that's winning, in my book."

Stefan lifted his eyes to hers. In the dim light, the green looked suddenly dark and mysterious. "And one more thing," he whispered. "Because I am what I am...and because your crowning glory isn't that glorious golden cloud of hair, but an aura that is...ineffable. Indescribable. Beyond any words..."

Elena had thought they would sit and simply gaze at each other, drowning in each other's eyes, but that wasn't happening. Stefan's expression had slipped and Elena realized how close to bloodlust - and to death - he still really was.

Hurriedly, Elena pulled her damp hair to one side of her neck, and then she leaned back, knowing Stefan would catch her.

He did this, but although Elena tilted her chin back, he tilted it down in his two hands to look at her.

"Do you know how much I love you?" he asked.

His entire face was masked now, enigmatic and strangely thrilling. "I don't think you do," he whispered. "I've watched and watched how you were willing to do anything, anything to save me...but I don't think you know how much that love has been building up, Elena...."

Delicious shivers were going down Elena's spine.

"Then you'd better show me," she whispered. "Or I might not believe that you mean it - "

"I'll show you what I mean," Stefan whispered back. But when he bent down it was to kiss her softly. The feelings inside Elena - that this starving creature wanted to kiss her instead of going at once for her throat, reached a peak that she could not explain in thoughts or words, but only by drawing Stefan's head so that his mouth rested on her neck.

"Please," she said. "Oh, Stefan, please."

Then she felt the quick sacrificial pains, and then Stefan was drinking her blood, and her mind, which had been fluttering around like a bird in a lighted room, now saw its nest and its mate and swooped up and up and up to at last reach unity with its best-beloved.

After that there was no need for clumsy things like words. They communicated in thoughts as pure and clear as shimmering gems, and Elena rejoiced because all of Stefan's mind was open to her, and none of it was walled off or dark and there were no boulders of secrets or chained and weeping children...

What! she heard Stefan exclaim voicelessly. A child in chains? A mountain-sized boulder? Who could have that in their mind - ?

Stefan broke off, knowing the answer, even before Elena's lightning-swift thought could tell him. Elena felt the clear green wave of his pity, spiced by the natural anger of a young man who has gone through the depths of hell, but untainted by the terrible black poison of hatred of brother for brother.

When Elena had finished explaining all she knew about Damon's mental processes, she said, And I don't know what to do! I've done everything I could, Stefan, I've - I've even loved him. I gave him everything that wasn't yours alone. But I don't know if it's made even the slightest difference.

He called Matt "Matt" instead of Mutt, Stefan interrupted.

Yes. I...noticed that. I'd kept asking him to, but it never seemed to matter.

It mattered this way: you managed to change him. Not many people can.

Elena wrapped him in a tight embrace, stopped, worried that it was too tight, and glanced at him. He smiled and shook his head. He was already looking like a person rather than a death camp survivor.

You should keep using it, Stefan said voicelessly. Your influence over him is strongest.

I will - without any artificial Wings, Elena promised. Then she worried that Stefan would think her too presumptuous - or too attached.

But one look at Stefan was enough to assure her that she was doing the right thing.

They clung to each other.

It wasn't as hard as Elena had imagined it would be - handing Stefan over to other humans to be bled. Stefan had a clean pair of pajamas on, and the first thing he said to all three donors was, "If you get frightened or change your mind, just say so. I can hear perfectly well, and I'm not in bloodlust. And anyway, I'll probably sense it if you're not enjoying it before you do, and I'll stop. And finally - thank you - thank you all. I've decided to break my oath tonight because there's still some little chance that if I slept I wouldn't wake up tomorrow without you."

Bonnie was horrified and indignant and furious. "You mean you couldn't sleep all that time because you were afraid to - to...?"

"I did fall asleep from time to time, but thank fortune - thank God - I always woke up again. There were times when I didn't dare move to conserve energy, but somehow Elena kept finding ways to come to me, and every single time she came, she brought me some kind of sustenance." He gave Elena a look that sent her heart spinning out of her chest and high into the stratosphere.

And then she set up a schedule, with Stefan being fed every hour on the hour, and then she and the others left the first volunteer, Bonnie, alone, so as to be more comfortable.

It was the next morning. Damon had already been out to visit Leigh, the antiques-seller's niece, who had seemed very glad to see him. And now he was back, to look with scorn at the slug-a-beds who were distributed all around the boardinghouse.

That was when he saw the bouquet.

It was heavily sealed down with wards - amulets to help get it through the dimensional gap. There was something powerful in there.

Damon cocked his head to one side.

Hmm...I wonder what?

Dear Diary,

I don't know what to say. We're home.

Last night we each had a long bath...and I was half-disappointed, because my favorite long-handled back-scrubbing brush wasn't there, and there was no star ball to make dreamy music for Stefan - and the water was LUKEWARM! And Stefan went to see if the water heater was turned on all the way and met Damon going to do the same thing! Only, they couldn't because we're home again.

But I woke up a couple of hours ago for a few minutes to see the most beautiful sight in the world...a sunrise. Pale pink and eerie green in the east, with nighttime still full dark in the west. Then deeper rose in the sky, and the trees all wreathed in dew clouds. Then a shiny glory from the edge of the horizon and dark rose, cream, and even a green melon color in the sky, Finally, a line of fire and in an instant all the colors change. The line becomes an arc, the western sky is deepest deepest blue, and then up comes the sun bringing warmth and light and color to the green trees and the sky begins to become celestial blue - celestial just means heavenly, although somehow, I have a delicious shivery feeling when I say it. The sky becomes a gemlike, celestial, cerulean blue and the golden sun begins to pour energy, love, light, and every good thing onto the world.

Who could not be happy to watch this while Stefan held her?

We who are so lucky as to be born into the light - who see it every day and never think about it, we're blessed. We could have been born shadow souls who live and die in crimson darkness, never even knowing that somewhere there is something better.

Chapter 42

By now Matt and Mrs. Flowers couldn't ignore the blinding lights anymore. They had to go outside.

But just as Matt opened the door there was - well, Matt didn't know what it was. Something blasted straight out of the ground and into the sky, where it got smaller and smaller, became a star, and disappeared.

A meteor that had gone through the Earth? But wouldn't that mean tsunamis and earthquakes and shockwaves and forest fires and maybe even the Earth ripping apart? If one meteor that hit the surface could kill off all the dinosaurs...

The light that had been shining upward had faded slightly.

"Well, bless my soul," said Mrs. Flowers in a small, shaken voice. "Matt, dear, are you all right?"

"Yes, ma'am. But..." Matt's vocabulary couldn't stand the strain. "What the hell was it?"

And to his slight surprise, Mrs. Flowers said, "My sentiments exactly!"

"Wait - there's something moving. Get back!"

"Dear Matt, be careful with that gun..."

"It's people! Oh, my God! It's Elena." Matt abruptly sat down on the ground. He could only whisper now. " Elena. She's alive. She's alive!"

From what Matt could see, there were a group of people climbing and helping others climb out of a perfectly rectangular hole, perhaps five feet deep, in Mrs. Flowers's angelica patch.

They could hear voices. "All right," Elena was saying, as she bent down. "Now grab my hands."

But the way she was dressed! A scrap of scarlet that showed all sorts of scratches and cuts on her legs. On top - well, the remains of the gown covered about what a bikini would. And she was wearing the largest, most sparkly costume jewelry that Matt had ever seen.

More voices, going on through Matt's shock.

"Be careful, yes? I will lift him to you - "

"I can climb out my own." - surely that was Stefan!

"You see?" Elena rejoiced. "He says he can climb out his own!"

"Oui, but perhaps one small lift - "

"This is hardly the time for machismo, little brother." And that, Matt thought, fingering the revolver, was Damon. Blessed bullets...

"No, I want - to do it myself - okay - got it. There."

"There! You see! He's better every second!" Elena caroled.

"Where's the diamond? Damon?" Stefan sounded anxious.

"I have it safe. Relax."

"I want to hold it. Please."

"More than you want to hold me?" Elena asked. There was a blur and then Stefan was lying back in her arms, while she said, "Easy, easy."

Matt stared. Damon was right behind them, almost as if he belonged there. "I'll watch the diamond," he said flatly. "You watch your girl."

"Excuse me - I'm sorry, but...could somebody please lift me out?" And that was Bonnie! Bonnie, sounding plaintive but not afraid or unhappy. Bonnie giggling! "Have we got all the sacks of star balls?"

"We've got all the ones from that house we found." And that was Meredith. Thank God. They'd all made it out. But despite his thoughts, his eyes were drawn again to one figure - the one who seemed to be supervising things - the one with golden hair.

"We need the star balls because any one of them might be - " she was beginning, when Bonnie cried out "Oh, look! Look! It's Mrs. Flowers and Matt!"

"Now, Bonnie, they'd hardly be waiting for us," Meredith put in.

"Where? Bonnie, where?" Elena demanded.

"If it's Shinichi and Misao in disguise I'm going to - hey, Matt!"

"Will someone please tell me where?"

"Right there, Meredith!"

"Oh! Mrs. Flowers! Um...I hope we didn't wake you."

"I have never had a happier awakening," Mrs. Flowers said solemnly. "I can see what you have been through in the Dark Place.

Your - er - lack of sufficient clothing..."

A sudden silence. Meredith glanced at Bonnie. Bonnie glanced at Meredith.

"I know these clothes and gems may seem a little too much..."

Matt found his voice. "Those jewels? They're real?"

"Oh, they're nothing. And we're all dirty...."

"Forgive me. We stink - which is my fault - " Stefan began, only to have Elena cut in.

"Mrs. Flowers, Matt: Stefan's been a prisoner! All this time! Starved and tortured - oh, God!"

"Elena. Shhh. You got me back."

"We got you back. Now, I'll never let you go. Ever, ever."

"Easy, love. I really need a bath and - " Stefan stopped suddenly. "There're no iron bars! Nothing to shut off my Powers! I can..." He stepped away from Elena, who clung with one hand. There was a soft, silvery flash of light, like a full moon appearing and disappearing in their midst.

"Over here!" he said. "Anyone who doesn't want little beastly parasites, I can take care of you."

"I'm your girl," said Meredith. "I have a phobia about fleas, and Damon never even got me any flea powder. What a master!"

There was laughter at this, laughter Matt didn't understand. Meredith was wearing - well, it had to be costume jewelry - but still it looked like about a few million dollars' worth of sapphires.

Stefan took Meredith's hand. There was the same soft flash of light. And then Meredith stepped back saying, "Thanks."

Stefan's low response was, "Thank you, Meredith." Meredith's blue dress was at least in one piece, Matt observed.

Bonnie - whose dress had been slashed into starlight-colored ribbons - was raising a hand. "Me, too, please!"

Stefan took her hand, and it happened all over again. "Thank you, Stefan! Oooh! I feel so much better! I hated itching!"

"Thank you, Bonnie. I hated to think I was dying alone."

"Other vampires, take care of yourselves!" Elena said, as if she had a clipboard and were checking items off. "And, Stefan, please - " She held out her hands to him.

He knelt in front of her, kissed both her hands, then enshrouded them in the soft white light.

"But I'd still like a bath..." said Bonnie pleadingly, as the new vampire - the tall fit one - and Damon had each sparked a moonlight glow around themselves.

Mrs. Flowers spoke up. "There are four working bathtubs in that house: in Stefan's room, in my room, in the rooms on either side of Stefan's. Be my guest. I'll put some bath salts in each right now." And then she added, holding her arms out to the whole ragged, bleeding, dirty bunch of them: "My house is yours, my dears."

There was a chorus of passionate "thank yous."

"I'll arrange a rota. For feeding Stefan, I mean. If you girls are willing," Elena added quickly, looking at Bonnie and Meredith. "He doesn't need much, just a little every hour until morning."

Elena still seemed very shy of Matt. Matt was very shy of her. But he stepped forward, empty hands held up to show that he was harmless. "Is it a rule that it's only girls? Because I've got blood, too, and I'm healthy as a horse."

Stefan quickly looked at him. "No rule about only girls. But you don't have to - "

"I want to help you."

"Okay, then. Thank you, Matt."

The proper response seemed to be "Thank you, Stefan," but Matt couldn't think of anything until, "Thanks for taking care of Elena."

Stefan smiled. "Thank Damon for that. He and the others all helped me - and each other."

"We Also Walk Dogs - at least Sage does," Damon said slyly.

"Oh - that reminds me. I should use that de-parasiting trick on my two friends. Saber! Talon! Heel!" He added a whistle that Matt could never have imitated.

In any case, Matt was operating in a dream. A huge dog, almost as big as a pony, seemingly, and a falcon came out of the darkness.

"Now," the fit vampire said, and once again the soft light shone.

And then: "There. If you don't mind; I prefer to sleep out-of-doors with my friends. I am grateful for all your kindnesses, Madame, and my name is Sage. The hawk is Talon; the dog, Saber."

Elena said, "Dibs on Stefan's bath for Stefan and me, and Mrs. Flowers's bath for the girls. You boys can work things out on your own."

"I," Mrs. Flowers said gravely, "will be in the kitchen, making sandwiches." She turned to go.

That was when Shinichi arose from the earth above them.

Or rather when his face arose. It was clearly an illusion, but a terrifying and marvelous one. Shinichi actually seemed to be there, a giant, perhaps supporting the world on his shoulders. The black part of his hair blended in with the night, but the scarlet tips made a flaming halo around his face. Having come from a land that was dominated by a giant red sun, night and day, it was an odd sight.

Shinichi's eyes were red as well, like two small moons in the sky, and they focused on the group by Mrs. Flowers's house.

"Hello," he said. "What, you look so surprised? You shouldn't be. I really couldn't let you come back without popping up to say 'hello.' After all, it's been a long time - for some of you," the giant face said, grinning. "Also, of course, to share in the festivities - we've saved little Stefan, and, my, we even fought an oversized chicken to do it."

"I'd like to see you take Bloddeuwedd on, one on one, and get a secret key out of her nest, at the same time," Bonnie began indignantly, but stopped when Meredith squeezed her arm.

Sage, meanwhile was murmuring something about what his own "oversized chicken," Talon, would do if Shinichi were brave enough to show up in person.

Shinichi ignored all this. "Oh, yes, and the mental calisthenics you had to go through. Truly formidable. Well, never again will we mistake you for blunder-headed idiots who never really asked why my sister would give you any clues in the first place, much less clues that Outsiders could understand. I mean" - he leered - "why not just go and swallow the key in the first place, hmm?"

"You're bluffing," Meredith said flatly. "You underestimated us, plain and simple."

"Maybe," said Shinichi. "Or maybe it was something else entirely."

"You lost," said Damon. "I realize that may be an entirely new concept for you, but it's true. Elena has gained much more control over her Powers."

"But will they work here?" Shinichi smiled eerily. "Or will they suddenly disappear in the light of a pale yellow sun? Or in the depths of true darkness?"

"Don't let him bait you, Madame," Sage shouted. "Your Powers come from a place he cannot enter!"

"Oh, yes, and the renegade. The Rebel's rebel son. I wonder...what are you calling yourself this time? Cage? Rage? I wonder what these children will think when they learn who you really are?"

"It won't matter who he is," Bonnie cried. "We know that. We know that he's a vampire, but that he can be gentle and kind and he's saved us over and over again." She shut her eyes, but held her ground against the gale of Shinichi's laughter.

"So 'Madame,'" Shinichi mocked, "you think you have gained 'Sage.' But I wonder if you know what in chess we call a 'gambit' is? No? Well, I'm sure your intellectual friend will be glad to inform you."

There was a pause. Then Meredith said, with no expression at all, "A gambit is when a chess player sacrifices something - for instance, a pawn - deliberately - just to get something else. A position on the chessboard that they want, for instance."

"I knew you'd be able to tell them. What do you think of our first gambit?"

Another silence, then Meredith said: "I presume you mean you've given us back Stefan to achieve something better."

"Oh, if you only had golden hair - as your friend Elena has so generously displayed."

There were various exclamations on the theme of "Huh?" - most of them directed at Shinichi, but some at Elena.

Who promptly exploded. "You took Stefan's memories - ?"

"Now, now, nothing so drastic, my dear. But a thirty-meld-a-session beautician - now, she was most cooperative."

Elena turned her gaze up at the giant face with a look of utter contempt. "You...cad."

"Oh, I'm stricken to the heart." But the thing was, Shinichi's giant face did look stricken - angry and dangerous. "Between you, all such close friends: do you know how many secrets there are? Of course, Meredith is a mistress of secrecy, keeping her secrets from her friends all these years. You think you've already pumped her dry, but the best is yet to come. And then, of course, there is Damon's secret."

"Which if spoken of here and now will mean instant war," Damon said. "And you know, it's strange, but I got the feeling that you came here tonight to negotiate."

This time Shinichi's laughter really was a gale, and Damon had to leap behind Meredith to prevent her being knocked into the hole the elevator had made.

"Very gallant," Shinichi boomed again, shattering glass somewhere on Mrs. Flowers's house. "But I really must be going. Shall I leave a synopsis of the prizes you still have to search for before your little company can look each other in the eye?"

"I think we already have them. And you are no longer welcome around this home," Mrs. Flowers said coolly.

But Elena's mind was still working. Even standing here, knowing that Stefan needed her, she was searching for the reasons behind this: Shinichi's second gambit. Because she was sure that this was one.

"Where are the pillowcases?" she said in a sharp voice that frightened and bewildered half the group, and simply frightened the rest.

"I was holding one, but then I decided to hold on to Saber instead." - Sage.

"I had one, at the bottom of the hole, but I dropped it when somebody lifted me out." - Bonnie.

"I've still got one, although I don't understand what good - " Damon began.

"Damon!" Elena whirled to him. "Trust me! We've got yours and Sage's safe - what's happening to Bonnie's in the hole?"

The moment she had said "trust me" Damon had dumped his pillowcase on top of Sage's, and by the time she was finished, he had leaped into the hole, which was still so bright with leylight as to hurt any vampire's eyes.

But Damon made no complaint. He said, "I have it safe now - no, wait! A root! A damned root is curled around one of the star balls! Someone toss me a knife, quick!"

While everyone else was slapping their pockets for knives, Matt did something that Elena couldn't believe. First he glanced down into the six-foot-deep hole while pointing - a revolver, was it? Yes - she recognized it as the twin of Meredith's. Then without trying to let himself down easily, he simply jumped as Damon had, into the hole.

"DON'T YOU WANT TO KNOW - " roared Shinichi, but no one was paying any attention to him.

Matt's jump didn't end lightly as Damon's had. It ended with a gasp and a stifled curse. But Matt didn't waste time; still on his knees, he handed the gun up to Damon.

"Blessed bullets - shoot it!"

Damon moved very fast. He didn't even seem to aim. But he must have clicked the safety off and aimed immediately, for the root was now streaking for the soft wall of the hole, its end wrapped tightly around something round.

Elena heard two shattering revolver shots; three. Then Damon stooped and picked up a vine-wrapped ball, medium-sized and crystal clear where its true surface could be seen.

"PUT THAT DOWN!" Shinichi's rage was beyond all measure. The two burning red spots of his eyes were like flames - like moons of fire. He seemed to be trying to get them to comply by sheer volume. "I SAID, DON'T TOUCH THAT WITH YOUR FILTHY HUMAN HANDS!"

"Oh, my God!" gasped Bonnie.

Meredith said simply, "It's Misao's - it has to be. He'd gamble with his own; but not with hers. Damon, hand it up to me, along with the revolver. I bet it's not bulletproof." She knelt, reaching into the hole.

Damon, with a raised eyebrow, did as she said.

"Oh, God," Bonnie cried, from the edge of the hole. "Matt's sprained his ankle - at least."

"I TOLD YOU," roared Shinichi. "YOU'LL BE SORRY - "

"Here," Damon said to Bonnie, taking not the slightest notice of Shinichi. Without any more ado, he picked up Matt and floated up out of the hole. He deposited the fair-haired boy beside Bonnie, who looked at him with the wide brown eyes of utter confusion.

Matt, though, was a Virginian through and through. After swallowing only once, he got out a "Thank you, Damon."

"No problem, Matt," Damon said, and then "What?" as someone gasped.

"You remembered," Bonnie cried, "You remembered his - Meredith!" she broke off, looking at the tall girl. "The grass!"

Meredith, who had been examining the star ball with a strange expression, now tossed the revolver to Damon and tried with her free hand to tear away the grass that had twined around her feet and up her ankles already. But even as she did so, the grass seemed to leap upward and grab her hand, binding it to her feet. And now it was sprouting, growing, racing up her body toward the ball which she held high in the air.

At the same time, it was tightening around her chest, forcing air out of her lungs.

It all happened so fast that it was only when she gasped, "Somebody take th' ball," that the others leaped to her aid. Bonnie was the first to get there, tearing with her fingernails at the greenery that was squeezing Meredith's chest. But each blade was like steel, and she couldn't rip away even one of them. Neither could Matt or Elena. Meanwhile, Sage was trying to lift Meredith bodily - to pluck her from the earth - and having no more success than the rest.

Meredith's face, clearly visible in the light still shining from the hole, was going white.

Damon snatched the star ball from her fingers just before the tangled greenery running up her arm could reach it. He then began moving literally faster than the human eye could track, never stopping in any one place long enough for any plant to grasp him.

But still, the grass around Meredith was tightening. Now her face was turning blue. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open for a breath that would not come.

"Stop it!" Elena screamed at Shinichi. "We'll give you the star ball! Just let go of her!"

"LET GO OF HER?" Shinichi bellowed laughter. "MAYBE YOU'D BETTER LOOK TO YOUR OWN INTERESTS FIRST BEFORE ASKING ME A FAVOR."

Wildly, Elena looked around - and saw that grass had almost completely enveloped a kneeling Stefan, who had been too weak to move as quickly as the others had.

And he had never made a sound to call attention to himself.

"No!" Elena's desperate scream almost drowned out Shinichi's laughter. "Stefan! No!" Even knowing it was futile, she threw herself at him and tried to rip the grass away from his thin chest.

Stefan simply gave her the faintest of smiles and shook his head sadly.

That was when Damon came to a stop. He held the star ball up toward Shinichi's lowering visage. "Take it!" he shouted. "Take the ball, damn you, but let the two of them go!"

This time the gale of Shinichi's laughter went on and on. A spiral of grass grew from a point beside Damon and an instant later had formed a hideous, shaggy green fist, which almost reached the star ball.

But -

"Not yet, my dears," gasped Mrs. Flowers. She and Matt had come breathlessly from the boardinghouse storage room - Matt limping badly - and they both held what looked like Post-it notes in their hands.

The next thing Elena knew, Damon was moving at ferocious speed again, away from the fist, and Matt was slapping a bit of paper on the grass covering Stefan, while Mrs. Flowers did the same to the greenery on Meredith.

As Elena watched in disbelief, the grass seemed to melt, dying away into hay-colored blades that fell to the ground.

The next moment she was holding Stefan.

"Let's get inside, my dears," Mrs. Flowers said. "It's safe in the storage room - the able help the wounded, of course."

Meredith and Stefan were taking great gasping breaths.

But Shinichi had the last word.

"Don't you worry," he said, strangely calm as if he realized he'd lost - for now. "I'll get that sphere back soon enough. You don't know how to use that kind of Power anyway! And besides all that, I'm going to tell you what you've been hiding from your so-called friends. Just a few secrets, yes?"

"The hell with your secrets," shouted Bonnie.

"Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret all their life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer - and I am not speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. And then there is the question of the true identity of Sage - good luck on your research there! One of you has already had their memory erased - and I don't mean Damon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there is the question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobody but Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories about Camelot. And then - "

That was when the sound as loud as Shinichi's giant-sized gales of laughter interrupted him. It tore through the face in the sky, leaving it drooping ridiculously. Then the face disappeared.

"What was that - "

"Who has the gun - ?"

"What kind of gun could do that to him?"

"One with blessed bullets," Damon said coolly, showing them the revolver, pointed down.

"You mean you did that?"

"Good for Damon!"

"Forget Shinichi!"

"He is a liar when it suits him, that I can tell you."

"I think," Mrs. Flowers said, "that we can retire to the boardinghouse now."

"Yeah, and let's go get our baths."

"Just one last thing." Shinichi's voice, giant-sized seemed to come from everywhere around them; from the sky, from the earth.

"You're really going to love what I have in mind next for you. If I were you, I'd start negotiating for that star ball right NOW." But his laughter was off and the muffled feminine sound behind him was almost like crying, as if Misao couldn't help herself.

"YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT!" Shinichi insisted in a roar.

Chapter 41

"Stefan!" Elena screamed and knew that she sounded like a madwoman when she screamed it.

There was no answer.

She was running. Following the light. "Stefan! Stefan!"

An empty cell.

A yellowed mummy.

A pyramid of dust.

Somehow, subconsciously, she suspected one of these things. And any one would have caused her to run out to fight Bloddeuwedd with her bare hands.

Instead, when she reached the right cell, she saw a weary young man, whose face showed that he had given up all hope. He lifted a stick-thin arm, rejecting her utterly.

"They told me the truth. You were exported for aiding a prisoner. I'm not susceptible to dreams anymore."

"Stefan!" She fell to her knees. "Do we have to go through this every single time?"

"Do you know how often they re-create you, bitch?"

Elena was shocked. More than shocked. But the next moment the hatred had faded from his face.

"At least I get to look at you. I had...I had a picture. But they took that, of course. They cut it up, very slowly, making me watch. Sometimes they made me cut it. If I didn't cut it, they would - "

"Oh, darling! Stefan, darling! Look at me. Listen to the prison. Bloddeuwedd is destroying it. Because I've stolen the other half of your key from her nest, Stefan, and I am not a dream. Do you see this? Did they ever show you this?" She held out the hand with the double fox ring on it. "Now - now - where do I put it?"

"You are warm. The bars are cold," Stefan said, clutching her hand and speaking as if reciting out of a children's book.

"Here!" Elena cried triumphantly. She didn't need to take the ring off. Stefan was holding her other hand, and this lock worked like a seal ring. She placed it straight into a circular depression in the wall. Then, when nothing happened, she turned it right. Nothing. Left.

The cell bars slowly began to lift into the ceiling.

Elena couldn't believe it and for an instant thought she was hallucinating. Then when she turned sharply to look at the ground she saw that the bars were already at least a foot above it.

Then she looked at Stefan, who was standing again.

Both of them fell back to their knees. They would have both gotten down and wriggled like snakes if necessary, the need to touch was so great. The horizontal struts on the bars made it impossible for them to hold hands as the bars lifted.

Then the bars were over the top of Elena's head and she was holding Stefan - she was holding Stefan in her arms! - appalled to feel bones under her hands, but holding him, and no one could tell her he was a hallucination or a dream, and if she and Stefan had to die together, then they would die together. Nothing mattered but that they not be separated again.

She covered the unfamiliar, bony face with kisses. Strange, no half-grown, gone-to-the-wild beard, but vampires didn't grow beards unless they had them when they became vampires.

And then there were other people in the cell. Good people. People laughing and crying and helping her create a makeshift litter out of stinking blankets and Stefan's pallet and no one screamed when lice jumped on them because everyone knew that Elena would have turned and ripped their throat out like Saber. Or rather, like Saber, but as Ms. Courtland had always said, with feeling. To Saber it was just a job.

Then somehow - things had begun to become disconnected - Elena was watching Stefan's beloved face and gripping his litter, and running - he didn't weigh anything - up a different corridor than the one she'd fought and shouldered and pushed and floundered in on her way in. Apparently all the Shi no Shi's salmon had chosen the other corridor to swim up. Undoubtedly there was a safe place for them at the end on that side.

And even as Elena wondered how a face could be so pure, and handsome, and perfect, even when it looked almost like a skull, she was thinking, I can run and stoop. And she bent over Stefan and her hair made a shield around them, so that it was just the two of them inside it. The entire outside world was shut out, and they were alone, and she said in his ear: "Please, we need you to be strong. Please - for me. Please - for Bonnie. Please - for Damon. Plea - "

She would have gone on naming all of them, and probably some over and over, but it was too much already. After his long deprivation, Stefan was in no mood to be contrary. His head darted up and Elena felt more than the usual pain because he was at the wrong angle, and Elena was glad because Stefan had struck a vein down its length and blood was flowing into his mouth in a steady stream.

They had to go a little more slowly now, or Elena would have tripped and colored Stefan's face maroon like a demon's, but they were still jogging. Someone else was guiding them.

Then, very suddenly they stopped. Elena, eyes shut, mind locked on to Stefan's, would not have looked up for the world. But in a moment they were moving again, and there was a feeling of spaciousness all around Elena and she realized that they were in the lobby and she had to make sure everyone knew.

It's on the left side of us now, she sent to Damon. It's close to the front. It's a door with all sorts of symbols above.

I believe I'm familiar with the species, Damon sent back dryly, but even he couldn't hide two things from her. One was that he was glad, actually glad to feel Elena's elation, and to know that it was he, in the main part, that had brought it about.

The other was simple. That if there was a choice between the life of himself and the life of his brother, he would give his own life. For Elena's sake, for his own pride.

For Stefan.

Elena didn't dwell on these secret things she had no right to know. She simply embraced them, let Stefan feel them in all their raw vibrancy, and made sure there was no feedback to tell Damon that Stefan knew. Angels were singing in heaven for her. Black Magic rose petals were scattering around her body. There was a release of doves and she felt their wings. She was happy.

But she was not safe.

She only learned it as she entered the lobby, but they were very lucky that the Dimensional Door was on the side it was. Bloddeuwedd had methodically destroyed the other side until it had collapsed into a mound that was nothing but splintered wood. Elena and Bloddeuwedd's feud might have started out as a quarrel between a hostess who thought her guest had broken the house rules and a guest who just wanted to run away, but it had become a war to the death. And given the way vampires, werewolves, demons, and other folk down here in the Dark Dimension reacted, it had created a sensation. The Guardians had their hands full keeping people out of the building. Dead bodies lay strewn on the street.

Oh, God, the people! The poor people! Elena thought, as this at last came into her field of view. As for the Guardians, who were keeping this place clear and fighting Bloddeuwedd on her behalf - God bless you for that, Elena thought, envisioning a standing-room-only lobby as they tried to race with Stefan across the floor. As it was, they were alone.

"Now we need your key again, Elena," Damon's voice, just above her, said.

Elena gently pried Stefan off her throat. "Just for a moment, my darling. Just for a moment."

Looking at the door, Elena was confounded for several moments. There was a hole, but nothing happened when she put the ring in it and pushed, jammed, or twisted left or right. Out of the corner of her eye she saw some dark shadow above her, dismissed it as irrelevant, and then had it come screaming at her like a dive-bomber, steel talons reaching for her.

There was no roof. Bloddeuwedd's talons had methodically ripped it away.

Elena knew it.

Because somehow Elena suddenly saw the whole of the situation, not just her part in it, but as if she were someone outside her body, who understood many more things than puny little Elena Gilbert did.

The Guardians were here to prevent collateral damage.

They could or would not stop Bloddeuwedd.

Elena knew that, too.

All the people running down the other corridor had been doing what an owl's prey normally does. They had been dashing for the bottom of their burrow. There was an enormous safe room there.

Somehow, Elena knew it.

But now, blurrily but definitely, Bloddeuwedd saw the ones she had been after in the first place, the nest robbers, the ones who had forever put out one of her huge round orange far-seeing eyes, and cut her so deeply that the other eye was filling with blood.

Elena could feel it.

Bloddeuwedd could see they were the ones who had caused her to smash her beak. The criminals, the savages, the ones she would tear to pieces slowly, slowly, a limb at a time, switching from one to another as she clutched five or six in one set of claws, or as she watched them, unable to run from lack of limbs, writhing beneath her.

Elena could sense it.

Beneath her.

Right now...they were directly beneath Bloddeuwedd.

Bloddeuwedd dove.

"Saber! Talon!" shouted Sage, but Elena knew that there would be no distraction now. There would be nothing but killing and tearing, slowly, and screams echoing off the single lobby wall.

Elena could picture it.

"It won't open, damn it," shouted Damon. He was manipulating Elena's wrist to move the key in the hole. But no matter how he pulled or pushed, nothing happened.

Bloddeuwedd was almost upon them.

She accelerated, throwing telepathic images before her.

Sinew stretching, joints cracking, bone splintering...

Elena knew -

NOOOOO!

Elena's cup of rage ran over.

Suddenly she saw everything she needed to know in one great sweeping epiphany. But it was too late to get Stefan inside the door, so the first thing she shouted was "Wings of Protection!"

Bloddeuwedd, barely six feet away, slammed into a barrier that a nuclear missile could not have harmed. She slammed into it at the speed of a racing car and with the mass of a medium-sized airplane.

Horror exploded beak first against Elena's wings. They were clear green at the top, dotted with flashing emeralds, and shading into a dawn pink covered with crystals at the bottom. The wings enwrapped all six humans and two animals - and they did not move by one millimeter when Bloddeuwedd smashed into them.

Bloddeuwedd had made herself roadkill.

Shutting her eyes, and trying not to think of the maiden who had been made of flowers (and who had killed her husband! Elena told herself desperately) with dry lips, and wetness trickling down her cheeks, Elena turned back to the door. Put the ring in. Made sure it was flush.

And said, "Fell's Church, Virginia, USA, Earth. Near the boardinghouse, please."

It was well after midnight. Matt was sleeping on the bunker's cot, while Mrs. Flowers slept on the couch, when they were suddenly wakened by a thump.

"What on earth?" Mrs. Flowers got up and stared out the window, which should have been dark.

"Be careful, ma'am," Matt said automatically, but couldn't help adding, "What is it?" - as always, expecting the worst and making sure the revolver with the blessed bullets was ready.

"It's...light," Mrs. Flowers said helplessly. "I don't know what else to say about it. It's light."

Matt could see the light, throwing shadows on their bunker floor. There was no sound of thunder, and hadn't been since he woke up. Hastily he ran to join Mrs. Flowers at the window.

"Did you ever...?" exclaimed Mrs. Flowers, lifting her hands and dropping them again. "Whatever could it mean?"

"I don't know, but I remember everybody talking about ley lines. Lines of Power in the ground."

"Yes, but those run along the surface of the earth. They don't point upward, like - like a fountain!" Mrs. Flowers said.

"But I heard that wherever three ley lines come together - I think Damon said - they can form a Gate. A Gate to where they were going."

"Dear me," said Mrs. Flowers. "You mean you think one of those Gateway things is out there? Maybe it's them, coming back."

"It couldn't be." The time Matt had spent with this particular old woman had made him not only respect her, but love her. "But I don't think we should go outside, anyway."

"Dear Matt. You are such a comfort to me," Mrs. Flowers murmured.

Matt didn't really see how. It was all her stored food and water they were using. Even the fold-up cot was hers.

If he had been on his own he might have investigated this...extraordinary thing. Three spotlights shining out of the ground at an angle so that they met just about at the height of a human being. Bright lights. And getting brighter every minute.

Matt sucked in his breath. Three ley lines, huh? God, it was probably an invasion of monsters.

He didn't even dare to hope.

Elena didn't know if she had needed to say USA or Earth, or even if the door could take her to Fell's Church, or if Damon would have to give her the name of some gate that was close to it. But...surely...with all those ley lines...

The door opened, revealing a small room like an elevator.

Sage said quietly, "Can you four carry him if you have to fight, too?" And - after a second to unravel what this meant - three shrieks of protest, in three different feminine tones, came.

"No! Oh, please, no! Oh don't leave us!!" - Bonnie, begging.

"You're not coming home with us?" - Meredith, straight-from-the-shoulder.

"I order you to get in - and make it quick!" - Elena.

"Such a dominant woman," murmured Sage. "Ah, well, it seems the Great Pendulum has swung again. I am only a man. I obey."

"What? Does that mean you're coming?" Bonnie cried.

"It means I am coming, yes." Gently, Sage took Stefan's wasted body in his arms and stepped into the little cubicle inside the door. Unlike the first keys Elena had used today, this one seemed to work more like a voice-activated elevator...she hoped. After all, Shinichi and Misao had each only needed one key for themselves. Here, a number of people might want to go to the same place at once.

She hoped.

Sage back-kicked Stefan's old bedding away. Something rattled on the ground. "Oh - " Stefan reached helplessly for it. "It's my Elena diamond. I found it on the floor after..."

"Plenty more where that came from," Meredith said.

"It's important to him," Damon, who was already inside, said. Instead of crowding farther into the elevator, the little room that might disappear at any second, that might be gone for Fell's Church before he could turn back, he walked out into the lobby, looked closely at the floor, and knelt. Then, quickly, he reached down and then got up and hurried into the little room again.

"Do you want to hold it or shall I?"

"You hold it...for me. Take care of it."

Anyone who knew of Damon's track record, especially with regards to Elena or even an old diamond that had belonged to Elena, would have said Stefan had to be a madman. But Stefan wasn't mad.

He clasped his hand over his brother's that held the diamond.

"And I'll hold on to you," he said with a faint, wry smile.

"I don't know if anyone is interested," Meredith said, "but there is a single button on the inside of this contraption."

"Push it!" cried Sage and Bonnie, but Elena cried more loudly, "No - wait!"

She'd spotted something. Across the lobby, the Guardians had been unable to stop a single, apparently unarmed citizen from entering the room and crossing the floor at a high-paced graceful glide. He must have been over six feet tall, wearing an entirely white tunic and breeches, which matched his long white hair, alert foxlike ears, and the long flowing silky tail that waved behind him.

"Shut the door!" bellowed Sage.

"Oh, my!" breathed Bonnie.

"Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?" snarled Damon.

"Don't worry. It's only a fellow prisoner. A silent fellow. Hey, you got out, too!" Stefan was smiling and that was enough for Elena. And the intruder was holding out something to him that - well, it couldn't be what it looked like - but it was getting quite close now and it looked like a bouquet of flowers.

"That is a kitsune, is it not?" Meredith asked, as if the world had gone mad around her.

"A prisoner - " said Stefan.

"A THIEF!" shouted Sage.

"Hush!" said Elena. "He can probably hear even if he can't speak."

By then the kitsune was upon them. He met Stefan's eye, glanced at the others and held out the bouquet, which was heavily sealed in plastic wrap and some kind of long stickers with magical-looking inscriptions on them.

"This is for Stefan," he said.

Everyone, including Stefan, gasped.

"Now I must deal with some tiresome Guardians." He sighed. "And you must press the button to make the room go, Beauty," he said to Elena.

Elena, who had momentarily been fascinated by the whisking of a fluffy tail around silken breeches suddenly blushed scarlet. She was remembering certain things. Certain things that had seemed very different...in a lonely dungeon...in the dark of artificially formed night....

Oh, well. Best to put a brave face on it.

"Thank you," she said, and pushed the button. The doors began to close. "Thank you again!" she added, bowing slightly to the kitsune. "I'm Elena."

"Yoroshiku. I am - "

The door shut between them.

"Is it that you have gone crazy?" Sage cried. "Taking a bouquet from a fox!"

"You're the one who seems to know him, Monsieur Sage," Meredith said. "What's his name?"

"I do not know his name! I do know he stole three-fifths of the Seine Cloister Treasure from me! I know that he is expert, but expert at cheating at the cards! Ahh!"

The last was not a cry of rage but an exclamation of alarm, for the little room was moving sideways, plunging downward, almost stopping, before it resumed its former steady motion.

"Will it really take us to Fell's Church?" Bonnie asked timidly, and Damon put an arm around her.

"It'll take us somewhere," he promised. "And then we'll see. We're a pretty able set of survivalists."

"Which reminds me," Meredith said. "I think Stefan looks better." Elena, who had been helping to buffer him from the dimensional elevator's motion, glanced up at her quickly.

"Do you really? Or is it just the light? I think he should be feeding," she said anxiously.

Stefan flushed, and Elena pressed fingers to her lips to stop them trembling. Don't, darling, she said voicelessly. Every one of these people have been willing to give their life for you - or for me - for us. I'm healthy. I'm still bleeding. Please don't waste it.

Stefan murmured, "I'll stop the bleeding." But when she bent to him, as she had known he would, he drank.

Chapter 40

Matt and Mrs. Flowers were in the bunker - the addition to the house that Mrs. Flowers's uncle had put onto the back for woodwork and other hobbies. It had fallen into even more neglect than the rest of the house, being used as a storage space for things Mrs. Flowers didn't know where else to put - such as Cousin Joe's folding cot and that old sagging couch that didn't match a stick of furniture inside anymore.

Now, at night, it was their haven. No child or adult from Fell's Church had ever been invited inside. In fact, except for Mrs. Flowers, Stefan - who'd helped move large furniture into it - and now Matt, no one had even been in for as long as Mrs. Flowers could remember.

Matt clung to this. He had been, slowly but surely, reading through the material Meredith had researched and one precious excerpt had meant a lot to him and Mrs. Flowers. It was the reason they were able to sleep at night, when the voices came.

The kitsune is often thought to be a sort of cousin to Western vampires, seducing chosen men (as most fox spirits take on a female form) and feeding directly on their chi, or life spirit, without the intermediary of blood. Thus one may make a case that they are bound by similar rules to the vampire. For example, they cannot enter human dwellings without invitation...

And oh, the voices...

He was profoundly glad now that he'd taken Meredith and Bonnie's advice and gone to Mrs. Flowers's first before going home. The girls had convinced him he'd only be putting his parents in danger by facing up to the lynch mob that awaited him, ready to kill him for allegedly assaulting Caroline. Caroline seemed to have found him at the boardinghouse immediately, anyway, but she never brought any kind of mob with her. Matt thought that perhaps it was because that would have been useless.

He had no idea what might have happened if the voices had belonged to ex-friends long ago invited to his house while he was at home.

Tonight...

"Come on, Matt," Caroline's voice, lazy, slow, and seductive purred. It sounded as if she were lying down, speaking into the crack under the door. "Don't be such a spoilsport. You know you have to come out sometime."

"Let me talk to my mom."

"I can't, Matt. I told you before, she's undergoing training."

"To be like you?"

"It takes a lot of work to get to be like me, Matt." Suddenly Caroline's tone was not flirtatious any longer.

"I bet," Matt muttered, and added, "You hurt my family and you're going to be sorrier than you can imagine."

"Oh, Matt! Come on, get real. Nobody is going to hurt anybody."

Matt slowly opened his hands to look at what he had clenched between them. Meredith's old revolver, filled with the bullets blessed by Obaasan.

"What is Elena's middle name?" he asked - not loudly, even though there were the sounds of music and dancing in Mrs. Flowers's backyard.

"Matt, what are you talking about? What are you doing in there, making a family tree?"

"I asked you a simple question, Care. You and Elena played since you were practically babies, right? So what is her middle name?"

A flurry of activity. When Caroline finally answered he could clearly hear the whispered coaching, as Stefan had heard so long ago, just a beat before her words.

"If all you're interested in is playing games, Matthew Honeycutt, I'll go find someone else to talk to."

He could practically hear her flounce away.

But he felt like celebrating. He allowed himself a whole graham cracker and half a cup of Mrs. Flowers's homemade apple juice. They never knew when they might be locked in here for good, with only the supplies they had, so whenever Matt went out of the bunker he brought back as many things as he could find that might be useful. A barbeque lighter and hairspray equaled a flame thrower. Jar after jar of Mrs. Flowers's delicious preserves. Lapis rings in case the worst happened and they ended up with pointy teeth.

Mrs. Flowers turned in her sleep on the couch. "Who was that, Matt dear?" she asked.

"Nobody at all, Mrs. Flowers. You just go back to sleep."

"I see," Mrs. Flowers said in her sweet-old-lady voice. "Well, if nobody at all comes back you might ask her her own mother's first name."

"I see," Matt said in his best imitation of her voice and then they both laughed. But underneath his laughter there was a lump in his throat. He had known Mrs. Forbes a long time, too. And he was scared, scared of the time that it would be Shinichi's voice calling.

Then they were going to be in trouble for good.

"There it is," shouted Sage.

"Elena!" screamed Meredith.

"Oh, God!" screamed Bonnie.

The next instant, Elena was thrown, and something landed on top of her. Dully, she heard a cry. But it was different from the others. It was a choking sound of pure pain as Bloddeuwedd's beak thunked into something made of flesh. Me, Elena thought. But there was no pain.

Not...me?

There was a coughing sound above her.

"Elena - go - my shields - won't hold - "

"Damon! We'll go together!"

Hurts...

It was just the shadow of a telepathic whisper and Elena knew Damon didn't think she'd heard it. But she was circling her Power faster and faster, done with deception, caring only about getting those she loved out of danger.

I'll find a way, she told Damon. I'll carry you. Fireman's lift.

He laughed at that, giving Elena some hope that he wasn't dying. Now Elena wished she'd taken Dr. Meggar in the carriage with them so he could use his healing powers on the injured -

- and then what? Leave him to the mercies of Bloddeuwedd? He wants to build a hospital here, in this world. He wants to help the children, who surely don't deserve all the evils that I've seen visited on them -

She shunted the thoughts aside. This was no time for a philosophical debate about doctors and their obligations.

It was time to run.

Reaching behind her, she found two hands. One was slick with blood so she reached farther, thanking her late mother for all the ballet lessons, all the children's yoga, and she grabbed the sleeve above it. And then she put her back into it and pulled.

To her surprise she hauled Damon up with her. She tried to heft him farther up on her back, but that didn't work. And then she even managed a wobbly step forward, and another -

And then Sage was there picking both of them up and they were going into the lobby of the building of the Shi no Shi.

"Everyone, get out! Get out! Bloddeuwedd's after us and she'll kill anything in her way!" Elena shouted. It was the strangest thing. She hadn't meant to shout. Hadn't formulated the words, except perhaps in the deepest parts of her subconscious. But she did shout them into the already frenzied lobby and she heard the cry taken up by others.

What she didn't expect was that they would run, not out into the street, but down toward the cells. She ought to have, of course, but she hadn't. And then she felt herself and Sage and Damon going down, down the way they had last night...

But was it really the right way? Elena clamped one hand over the other and saw, judging by foxlight, that they needed to head off to the right.

"WHAT ARE THOSE CELLS TO THE RIGHT OF US? HOW DO WE GET THERE?" she shouted to the young vampire gentleman next to her.

"That's Isolation and Mentally Disturbed," the vampire gentleman shouted back. "Don't go that way."

"I have to! Do I need a key?"

"Yes, but - "

"Do you have a key?"

"Yes, but - "

"Give it to me now!"

"I can't do that," he wailed in a way that reminded her of Bonnie at her most difficult.

"All right. Sage!"

"Madame?"

"Send Talon back to peck this man's eyes out. He won't give me the key to Stefan's ward!"

"As good as done, Madame!"

"W-wait! I cha-changed my mind. Here's the key!" The vampire fished through a ring of keys and handed one to her.

It looked like the other keys on his ring. Too much alike, Elena's suspicious mind said.

"Sage!"

"Madame !"

"Can you wait till I pass with Saber? I want him to tear the you-know-what off this guy if he's lied to me."

"Of course, Madame!"

"W-w-w-wait," gasped the vampire. It was clear that he was completely terrified. "I may - may have given you the wrong key - in this - this light - "

"Give me the right key and tell me anything I need to know or I'll have the dog backtrack you and kill you," Elena said, and at that moment, she meant it.

"H-here." This time the key didn't look like a key. It was round, slightly convex, with a hole in the middle. Like a donut that's been sat on by a police officer, part of Elena's mind said, and began laughing hysterically.

Shut up, she told her mind sharply.

"Sage!"

"Madame?"

"Can Talon see the man I'm holding by the hair?" She had to go on tiptoe to grasp him.

"But of course, Madame!"

"Can she remember him? If I can't find Stefan I want her to show him to Saber so he can track him."

"Uh...ah...got it, Madame!"

A hand, dripping blood from the wrist, lifted a falcon high, at the same time as there was a serendipitous crash from the top of the building.

The vampire was almost sobbing. "Turn r-right at the n-next right. Use the k-key in the slot at h-head height to g-get into the corridor. There m-may be guards there. But...if - if you don't have a key to the individual cell you want - I'm sorry, but - "

"I do! I have the cell key and I know what to do after that! Thank you, you've been very kind and helpful."

Elena let go of the vampire's hair.

"Sage! Damon! Bonnie! Look for a corridor, locked, going right. Then don't get swept away. Sage, hold Bonnie and have Saber bark like crazy. Bonnie, hold on to Meredith in front of the guys. The corridor leads to Stefan!"

Elena never knew how much any one of her allies heard of this message, sent by voice and telepathy. But ahead she heard a sound that to her was like choirs of angels singing.

Saber was barking madly.

Elena would never have been able to stop by herself. She was in a raging river of people and the raging river was taking her right around the barrier made by four people, a falcon, and a mad-seeming dog.

But eight hands reached out to her as she was swept by - and a snarling, snapping muzzle leaped ahead of her to divide the crowd. Somehow she was being run into, bruised, cradled, shoved, and, grasped and grasping, forced all the way to the right wall.

But Sage was looking at that same wall in despair. "Madame, he tricked you! There is no keyhole here!"

Elena's throat went raw. She prepared to shout, "Saber, heel," and go after the vampire.

But then, just below her, Bonnie's voice said, "Of course there is. It's shaped like a circle."

And Elena remembered.

Smaller guards. Like imps or monkeys. Bonnie's size.

"Bonnie, take this! Shove it into the hole. Be careful! It's the only one we've got."

Sage immediately directed Saber to stand and snarl just ahead of Bonnie in the tunnel, to keep the stream of panicked demons and vampires from jostling her.

Carefully, solemnly, Bonnie took the large key, examined it, cocked her head, turned it in her hands - and placed it in the wall.

"Nothing's happening!"

"Try turning or pushing - "

Click.

The door slid open.

Elena and her group more or less fell into the corridor, while Saber stood between them and the herd pounding by, barking and snapping and leaping.

Elena, lying on the ground, legs entwined with who-knew-who-else's, cupped a hand around her ring.

The fox eyes shone straight ahead and a bit to the right.

They were shining into a cell ahead.

Chapter 39

Elena waded into the crowd feeling like a soldier. She didn't know why. Maybe because she had thought of a quest and had managed to complete it and stay alive and bring back loot. Maybe because she bore honorable wounds. Maybe because above her there was an enemy who was still out for her blood.

Come to think of it, she thought, I'd better get all these noncombatants out of here. We can keep them in a safe house - well, a few dozen safe houses and -

What was she thinking? Safe house was a phrase from a book. She wasn't responsible for these people - idiots, mostly, who had stood, slavering, and watched her being whipped. But - despite that, maybe she should get them out of here.

"Bloddeuwedd!" she cried dramatically and pointed to a wheeling silhouette above. "Bloddeuwedd is free! She gave me these!" - pointing to the three lacerations on her back. "She'll go after you, too!"

At first most of the angry exclamation seemed to be about the fact that Elena now had a marked back. Elena was in no mood to argue. There was only one person here she wanted to talk to now. Keeping Bonnie and Meredith close behind her, she called.

Damon! Damon it's me! Where are you?

There was so much telepathic traffic that she doubted he would hear her.

But finally, she caught a faint, Elena?...Yes...

Elena, hold on to me. Think of holding me physically, and I'll take us to a different frequency.

Hold on to a voice? But Elena imagined holding on to Damon tightly, tightly, while she physically held Bonnie's and Meredith's hands.

Now can you hear me? This time the voice was much clearer, much louder.

Yes. But I can't see you.

But I see you. I'm coming to - WATCH OUT!

Too late, Elena's senses warned her of a huge shadow plummeting from above. She couldn't move quickly enough to get out of the way of a snapping, alligator-sized beak.

But Damon could. Leaping from somewhere, he gathered her and Bonnie and Meredith all in one great armful and leaped again, hitting grass and rolling.

Oh, God! Damon!

"Is anybody hurt?" he asked aloud.

"I'm fine," Meredith said quietly, calmly. "But I suspect I owe you my life. Thank you."

"Bonnie?" Elena asked.

I'm okay. I mean, "I'm okay. But Elena, your back - "

For the first time, Damon was able to turn Elena and see the wounds on her back. "I...did that? But...I thought..."

"Bloddeuwedd did that," Elena said sharply, looking upward for a circling shape in the deep red sky. "She just barely touched me. She has talons like knives, like steel. We have to go, now!"

Damon put both hands on her shoulders. "And come back when things have calmed down, you mean."

"And never come back! Oh, God, here she comes!"

Something out of the corner of her eye became baseball-sized in an instant, volleyball-sized in a second, human-sized in a moment. And then they were all scattering, leaping, rolling, trying to get away, except Damon, who seized Elena and shouted, "This is my slave! If you have any argument with her, you first argue with me!"

"And I am Bloddeuwedd, created by the gods, condemned to be a murderer every night. I'll kill you first, then eat her, the thief!" Bloddeuwedd called back in her raucous new voice. "Two bites is all it will take."

Damon, I need to tell you something!

"I'll fight you, but my slave is out of it!"

"First bite; here I come!"

Damon, we have to go!

A scream of primal pain and fury.

Damon was standing slightly crouched with a huge piece of glass held in his hand like a sword and great black drops of blood were dripping from where he had - oh, God! Elena thought - he'd put out one of Bloddeuwedd's eyes!

"YOU WILL ALL DIE! ALL!"

Bloddeuwedd made a charge at a random vampire directly below her and Elena screamed as the vampire screamed. The black beak had caught him by one leg and was lifting him.

But Damon was running forward, jumping, slashing. With a scream of fury, Bloddeuwedd took to the sky again.

Now everyone understood the danger. Two other vampires rushed to take their comrade from Damon, and Elena was glad that her friends were not responsible for another life. She had too much on her hands already.

Damon, I'm leaving now. You can come with me or not. I've got the key.

Elena sent the words on the frequency that they were more or less alone on, and she sent it without dramatics. She had no room for drama left. She'd been stripped of everything except the need to get to Stefan.

This time, she knew Damon heard her.

At first, she thought Damon was dying. That Bloddeuwedd had somehow come back and pierced him through his entire body, as with a spear made of light. Then she realized that the feeling was rapture, and two tiny child hands reached out of the light and clung to hers, allowing her to pull a thin, ragged, but laughing child away free.

No chains, she thought dizzily. He's not even wearing slave bracelets.

"My brother!" he told her. "My little brother's going to live!"

"Well, that's a fine thing," Elena said shakily.

"He's going to live!" A tiny frown line appeared. "If you hurry! And take good care of him! And - "

Elena put two fingers over his lips, very gently. "You don't need to worry about anything like that. You just be happy."

The little boy laughed. "I will! I am!"

"Elena!"

Elena came out of - well, she supposed it was a daze, although it had been more real than many other things she'd experienced recently.

"Elena!" Damon was trying desperately to restrain himself. "Show me the key!"

Slowly, majestically, Elena lifted her hand.

Damon's shoulders tensed, for - something - went down.

"It's a ring," he said dully. The slow and majestic bit hadn't worked on him at all.

"That's what I thought at first. It's a key. I'm not asking you, or seeing if you agree with me; I'm telling you. It's a key. The light from its eyes points to Stefan."

"What light?"

"I'll show you later. Bonnie! Meredith! We're leaving."

"YOU'RE NOT IF I SAY YOU'RE NOT!"

"Watch out!" screamed Bonnie.

The owl was diving again. And again, at the last second, Damon gathered the three girls and leaped. The owl's beak struck not grass nor shards of glass but the marble steps. They cracked. There was a scream of pain and another, as Damon, nimble as a dancer, slashed at the giant bird's one good eye. He got in a cut right above it. Blood began to fill the eye.

Elena couldn't stand any more. Ever since starting out on this journey with Damon and Matt, she had been a vial filling with anger. Drop by drop, with each new outrage, that anger had filled and filled the vial. Now her rage was about to fill it to overflowing.

But then...what would happen?

She didn't want to know. She was afraid she wouldn't survive it.

What she did know was that she couldn't watch any more pain and blood and anguish right now. Damon genuinely enjoyed fighting. Good. Let him. She was going to Stefan if she had to walk the whole way.

Meredith and Bonnie were silent. They knew Elena in this mood. She wasn't fooling around. And neither of them wanted to be left behind.

It was exactly at that moment that the carriage came rumbling up to the base of the marble stairs.

Sage, who obviously knew something about human nature, demonic nature, vampiric nature, and various kinds of bestial nature, jumped out of the carriage with two swords drawn. He also whistled. In a moment a shadow - a small one - came streaking to him out of the sky.

Last, slowly, stretching each leg like a tiger, came Saber, who immediately pulled back his lips to show an amazing number of teeth.

Elena leaped toward the carriage, her eyes meeting Sage's. Help me, she thought desperately. And his eyes said just as plainly, Have no fear.

Blindly, she reached behind her with both hands. One small, fine-boned, lightly trembling hand was thrust into hers. One slim, cool hand, hard as a boy's but with long tapering fingers grabbed her other one.

There was no one here to trust. No one to say good-bye to, or leave messages of good-bye with. Elena scrambled into the carriage. She got into the backseat, the farthest from the front, to accommodate incoming humans and animals.

And in they did come, like an avalanche. She had dragged Bonnie with her, and Meredith had followed, so that when Saber leaped into his accustomed place he landed on three soft laps.

Sage hadn't wasted a moment. With Talon clamped on his left wrist, he left just enough room for Damon's final spring - and a spring it was. Cracked and broken, oozing black fluid, Bloddeuwedd's beak hit the end of the marble stairs where Damon had been standing.

"Directions!" shouted Sage, but only after the horses were heading at a gallop - somewhere, anywhere, away.

"Oh, please don't let her hurt the horses," Bonnie gasped.

"Oh, please don't let her split this roof like cardboard," said Meredith, somehow able to be wry even when her life was in danger.

"Directions, s'il vous plaît!" roared Sage.

"The prison, of course," panted Elena. She felt that it had been a long time since she had been able to get enough air.

"The prison?" Damon seemed distracted. "Yes! The prison!" But then, he added, pulling up something like a pillowcase filled with billiard balls, "Sage, what are these?"

"Loot. Booty. Spoils! Plunder!" As the horses swung in a new direction, Sage's voice seemed to get more and more cheerful. "And look around your feet!"

"More pillowcases...?"

"I wasn't prepared for a big haul tonight. But things worked out well anyway!"

By now, Elena was feeling one of the pillowcases for herself. The case was, indeed, full of clear, sparkling hoshi no tama. Star balls. Memories. Worth...

Worthless?

"Priceless...although of course we don't know what's on them." Sage's voice changed subtly. Elena remembered the warning about "forbidden spheres." What, in the name of the yellow sun, could they possibly forbid down here?

Bonnie was the first to pick up a disk and put it to her temple. She did it so quickly, with such flashing, birdlike movements, that Elena couldn't stop her.

"What is it?" Elena gasped, trying to pull the star ball away.

"It's...poetry. Poetry I can't understand," said Bonnie crossly.

Meredith had also picked up a sparkling orb. Elena reached for her but once again she was too late.

Meredith sat as if in a trance for a moment, then grimaced and put the sphere down.

"What?" demanded Elena.

Meredith shook her head. She wore a delicate expression of distaste.

"What?" Elena almost yelled. Then as Meredith put the star ball by her feet, Elena lunged at it. She clapped it to her own temple and immediately was dressed in black leather from head to toe. There were two broad, square men in front of her, without a lot of muscle tone. And she could see all of their musculature because they were stark naked except for rags such as beggars wore. But they weren't beggars - they looked well-fed and oily and it was clearly an act when one of them groveled, "We have trespassed. We beg your forgiveness, O master!"

Elena was reaching to take the sphere off her temple (they stuck gently, if you put a little pressure there) and saying, "Why don't they use the space for something else?"

Something else was immediately all around her. A girl, in poor clothing, but not sacking. She looked terrified. Elena wondered if she were being controlled.

And Elena was the girl.

Pleasedon'tletitgetmepleasedon'tletitgetme -

Let what get you? Elena asked, but it was like watching a movie or book character while they were going into a lonely house in a howling storm and the music had turned eerie. The Elena who was walking in fear could not hear the Elena who was asking practical questions.

I don't think I want to see how this one comes out, she decided. She put the star ball back at Meredith's feet.

"Do we have three sacks?"

"Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am; three sacks full."

Oh. That didn't work out very well. Elena was opening her mouth again, when Damon added quietly: "And one sack empty."

"Really? We do? Then let's all try to divide these. Anything - forbidden - goes in one sack. Weird stuff like Bonnie's poetry reading goes into another. Any news of Stefan - or of us - goes in the third. And nice things, like summer days, go in the fourth," Elena said.

"I think you are being optimistic, me," Sage said. "To expect to find an orb with Stefan on it so quickly - "

"Everybody, hush!" Bonnie said frantically. "This is Shinichi and Damon talking him into it."

Sage stiffened, as if taking a lightning bolt from the stormy sky, then he smiled. "Speak of the devil," he murmured. Elena smiled at him and squeezed his hand before taking another ball.

"This one seems to be some kind of legal stuff. I don't understand it. A slave must be taking it because I can see all of them." Elena felt her facial muscles tighten with hatred at the sight - even in a sort of dream - of Shinichi, the kitsune who had done so much harm. His hair was black, except for an irregular fringe around the edges, which made it look as if it had been dipped in red-hot lava.

And then, of course, Misao. Shinichi's sister - allegedly. This star ball must have been made by a slave, because she could see both of the twins and a lawyerly-looking man.

Misao, Elena thought. Delicate, deferential, demure...demonic. Her hair was the same as Shinichi's, but it was held up and back in a ponytail. You could see the demonic part if she raised her eyes. They were effervescent, golden, laughing eyes, just like her brother's; eyes that had never had a regret - except perhaps for not exacting enough revenge. They took no responsibility. They found anguish funny.

And then something odd happened. All three of the figures in the room suddenly turned around and looked straight at her. Straight at whoever had made the sphere, Elena corrected herself, but it still was disconcerting.

It was even more disconcerting when they continued to advance. Who am I? Elena thought, feeling half-frantic with anxiety. Then she tried something she had never done before, or seen or heard of being done. She carefully extended her Power into the Self around the orb. She was Werty, a sort of lawyer's secretary. She/he took notes when important deals were done.

And Werty definitely didn't like the way things were going right now. The two clients and his boss closing in on him like this, in a way they never had before.

Elena pulled herself out of the clerk and put the ball down to one side. She shivered, feeling as if she'd been plunged into ice-cold water.

And then the roof crashed in.

Bloddeuwedd.

Even with her crippled beak, the huge owl tore off quite a bit of the roof of the carriage.

Everyone was screaming and no one was giving much good advice. Saber and Damon had both damaged her: Saber by raising right off the three soft laps he was sitting on and lunging straight up for Bloddeuwedd's feet. He had torn and shaken one before letting go to fall back into the carriage, where he almost slid off the back. Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith grabbed at whatever portions of canine anatomy they could reach, and hauled the huge animal into the backseat again.

"Scoot over! Give him his own seat," wailed Bonnie, looking at the shreds of her pearl-colored dress where Saber had taken off and ripped right through the gauzy material. He'd left red welts in his path.

"Well," Meredith said, "next time we'll request steel petticoats. But I really hope there isn't going to be a next time, anyway!"

Elena prayed fervently that she was right. Bloddeuwedd was skimming in from a lower angle now, undoubtedly hoping to snap off a few heads.

"Everybody grab wood. And spheres! Throw the spheres at her as she comes close to us." Elena was hoping that the sight of star globes - Bloddeuwedd's obsession - might slow her down.

At the same time Sage shouted, "Don't waste the star balls! Throw anything else! Besides, we're almost there. Hard left, then straightaway!"

The words gave Elena new hope. I have the key, she thought. The ring is the key. All I have to do now is get Stefan - and get all of us to the door with the keyhole. All in one building. I'm practically home.

The next sweep came in even lower. Bloddeuwedd, blind in one eye, with blood filling the other one, and her olfactory senses blocked by her own dried blood, was trying to ram the carriage and knock it over.

If she manages it, we'll be dead, Elena thought. And any who're still writhing like worms on the ground, she can pick off.

"DUCK!" She screamed the word both vocally and telepathically.

And then something like an airplane flew so close to her that she felt tufts of hair being pulled out, caught in its claws.

Elena heard a cry of pain from the front seat but didn't raise her head to see what it was. And that was good, for while the carriage suddenly slammed to a halt, the next instant a whirling, screaming, bird of death came searing out on the same course. Now Elena needed all of her attention, all her faculties, to avoid this monster that was buzzing them even lower.

"The carriage, she is finished! Get out! Run!" Sage's voice came rumbling to her.

"The horses," screamed Elena.

"Finished! Get out, damn you!"

Elena had never heard Sage swear before. She dropped the subject.

Elena never knew how she and Meredith did get out, tumbling over each other, trying to help and only getting in each other's way. Bonnie was already out, by virtue of the coach having hit a pole and sending her flying. Fortunately, it had sent her into a square of ugly but springy red clover, and she wasn't seriously injured.

"Ahhh, my bracelet - no, there it is," she cried, grabbing something glittering out of the clover. She cast a cautious look upward into the crimson night. "Now what do we do?"

"We run!" came Damon's voice. He came around the wreckage of the corner where they had fallen in a heap. There was blood on his mouth, on the previously immaculate white at his throat. It reminded Elena of those people who drank cow's blood as well as milk for nutrition. But Damon only drank from humans. He would never stoop to equine blood...

The horses will still be here and so will Bloddeuwedd, a harsh voice explained in her head. She would play with them; there would be pain. This way was quick. It was...a whim.

Elena reached for his hands, gasping. "Damon! I'm sorry!"

"GET OUT OF HERE," Sage was roaring.

"We have to get to Stefan," Elena said, and grabbed Bonnie with her other hand. "Help guide me, please. I can't see the ring very well." Meredith, she trusted, would get to the Shi no Shi building on her own resources.

And then there was a nightmare of running and flinching and false alarms by a shaken Bonnie. Twice the horror from above came skimming straight toward them only to crash just in front of them, or a little to the side, breaking wood and tile road alike, throwing up clouds of dust. Elena didn't know about all owls, but Bloddeuwedd swooped down at an angle on her prey, then opened her wings and dropped at the last moment. Part of the worst thing about the giant owl was her silence.

There was no rustling to warn them of where she might be. Something in her own feathers muffled the sound, so that they never knew when she was going to drop next.

In the end they had to crawl through all sorts of rubbish, going as fast as they could, holding wood, glass, anything sharp over their heads, as Bloddeuwedd made another pass.

And all the time Elena was trying to use her Power. It was not a Power she had used before, but she could feel its name shaping her lips. What she could not feel, could not force, was a connection between the words and the Power.

I'm useless as a heroine, she thought. I'm pathetic. They should have given these Powers to someone who already knew how to control such things. Or, no, they should have given them to someone and then given the someone a course on how to use them. Or - no -

"Elena!" Rubbish was flying in front of her, but then she was cutting left and somehow getting around it. And then she was on the ground and looking up at Damon, who had protected her with his body.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Come on!"

"I'm sorry," she whispered and held out her right hand, with the ring on it, for him to take.

And then she doubled up, heaving with sobs. She could hear the flapping of Bloddeuwedd right above her.

Chapter 38

"Talon! Uh - heel!" Elena shouted and began to race as fast as she could to get out of the room. This was strategy. Would the owl become even smaller so as to get through the door or would it destroy its sanctuary in order to stay on top of Elena?

It was a good strategy, but it didn't amount to much in the end. The owl shrank to dart through the door, and then resumed gigantic size to attack Elena as she ran down the stairs.

Yes, ran. With all of her Power channeled to her eyes, Elena leaped from step to step as Damon had before. Now there was no time for fear, no time for thinking. There was only time to turn over in her fingers a small, hard, crescent-shaped object.

Shinichi and Misao - they did make it into her nest.

There must be a ladder or something made of glass that even Damon couldn't see, in the flowerbed where Saber had stopped and barked. No - Damon would have seen it, so they must have brought their own ladder.

That's why their trail ended there. They climbed straight up into the library. And they ruined the flowers in the bed, which is why the new flowers weren't doing so well.

Elena knew from Aunt Judith, from her childhood, that transplanted flowers took awhile to revive and perk up again.

Leap...jump...leap...I am a spirit of fire. I cannot miss a step. I am a fire elemental. Leap...leap...leap.

And then Elena was looking at level ground, trying not to leap into it, but a prisoner to her body which was already leaping. She fell hard enough to numb one side, but she kept hold of the precious crescent clenched in a deathgrip in her hand.

A gigantic beak smashed into glass where she had been a moment before she slid. Talons raked her back.

Bloddeuwedd was still after her.

Sage and his group of sturdy young male and female vampires traveled at the pace of a running dog. Saber could lead them, but only as fast as he himself could go. Fortunately few people seemed to want to instigate a fight with a dog that weighed as much as they did - that weighed more than many of the beggars and children they encountered as they reached the bazaar.

The children crowded around the carriage, slowing them further. Sage took the time to exchange an expensive jewel for a purse full of small change and he scattered the coins behind the carriage as they went, allowing Saber free reign.

They passed dozens of stalls and crossing streets, but Saber was no ordinary bloodhound. He had enough Power to confound most vampires. With perhaps only one or two of the key molecules stuck to his nasal membrane he could hunt down his goal. Where another dog might be fooled by one of the hundreds of similar kitsune trails they were traveling through, Saber examined and rejected each of them as being not quite the right shape, size, or sculpture.

There came a time, though, when even Saber seemed defeated. He stood in the center of a six-way crossroads, regardless of traffic, limping slightly, and going in circles. He couldn't seem to choose a path.

And nor could I, my friend, Sage thought. We've come so far, but it's clear they went on farther. No way to go up or dig down...Sage hesitated, looking around the crimson-colored wheel of roads.

And then he saw something.

Directly across from him, but to his left was a perfumery. It must sell hundreds of fragrances, and billions of scent molecules were deliberately being released into the air.

Saber was blind. Not blind in his keen liquid dark eyes. But where it mattered he was numbed and blinded by the billions of scents that were being blown up his nose.

The vampires in the carriage were calling to go on or go back. They had no sense of real adventure, them. They just wanted a nice show. And undoubtedly many had slaves who were recording the whipping for them so they could enjoy it at leisure at home.

At that moment a flash of blue and gold decided Sage. A Guardian! Eh, bien...

"Heel, Saber!"

Saber's head and tail drooped as Sage randomly picked one of the directions and had him race alongside the running vampire to get out of the thoroughfare and onto another street.

But then, miraculously, the tail went up again. Sage estimated that there could not be even one molecule of the kitsune's scent left in Saber's nostrils now...

...but the memory of the scent...that was still there.

Saber was once again in hunting mode, with head down, tail straight, all his Power and intelligence concentrated on one goal and one goal only: to find another molecule that matched the three-dimensional memory of the one in his mind. Now that he was not blinded by the searing smell of all those different concentrated odors, he was able to think more clearly. And thinking alerted him to slip in between streets, causing a commotion behind him.

"What about the carriage?"

"Forget about the carriage! Don't lose sight of that guy with the dog!"

Sage, trying to keep up with Saber himself, knew when a chase was about to end. Tranquillit��! he thought to Saber. He also barely whispered the word. He had never been certain if his animal friends were telepathic or not, but he liked to believe that they were, while behaving as if they were not. Tranquillit��! he told himself.

And so, when the huge black dog with the shining dark eyes and the man ran up the steps to one particular ramshackle building, they did it silently. Then, as if he'd had a pleasant stroll in the country, Saber sat and looked at Sage in the face, laughing-panting. He opened and closed his mouth in a silent parody of a bark.

Sage waited for the young vampires to catch up with him before be opened the door. And, as he wanted the element of surprise, he didn't knock. Instead he smashed a fist with the Power of a sledgehammer through the door and groped for locks and chains and bolts. He could feel none. He did feel a knob.

Before opening the door, and going into who knew what peril, he said to those behind him, "Any loot we take is the property of Master Damon. I am his foreman and it was only through my dog's skills that we have made it so far."

There was agreement, ranging from grumbling to indifferent.

"By the same token," Sage said, "whatever danger is in there, I face first. Saber! NOW!"

They burst into the room, nearly taking the door off its hinges.

Elena cried out involuntarily. Bloddeuwedd had just done what Damon would not, and lined her back with bloody furrows from her talons.

But even as Elena managed to find the glass door to the outside, she could feel other minds surging to help sustain her, to lift and share some of the pain.

Bonnie and Meredith were picking their way through huge shards of glass to get to her. They were screaming at the owl. And Talon, heroically, was attacking from above.

Elena couldn't stand it any longer. She had to see. She had to know that this metallic-feeling thing that she'd picked out of Bloddeuwedd's nest wasn't some bit of filthy rubbish. She had to know now.

Rubbing the tiny scrap of metal against the ill-fated scarlet dress, she took a moment to glance downward, to see crimson sunlight sparkle against gold and diamonds and two folded-back little ears and two bright green alexandrite eyes.

The duplicate of the first fox key half, but facing the other way.

Elena's legs almost gave way underneath her.

She was holding the second half of the fox key.

Hurriedly, then, Elena brought up her free hand and plunged her fingers down into the carefully made little pocket behind the diamond insert. It concealed a tiny pouch, specially sewn there by Lady Ulma herself. In it was the first half of the fox key, replaced there as soon as Saber and Talon had finished with it. Now, as she shoved the second half-key into the pocket with the first, she was disconcerted to feel movement in the pouch. The two pieces of the fox key were - what, becoming one?

A black beak slammed into the wall beside her.

Without even thinking, Elena ducked and rolled to escape it. When her fingers flew back to make sure that the pouch was tied up and secure, she was astonished to feel a familiar shape resting inside.

Not a key?

Not a key!

The world was spinning wildly around Elena. Nothing mattered; not the object; not her own life. The kitsune twins had tricked them, had made fools of the idiot humans and the vampire who had dared to face up to them. There was no double fox key.

Still, hope refused to die. What was it Stefan used to say? Mai dire mai - never say never. Knowing what a chance she was taking, knowing she was a fool for taking it, Elena thrust her finger again into the pouch.

Something cool slipped onto one finger and stayed there.

She glanced down and for a moment was arrested by the sight. There, on her ring finger, gleamed a gold, diamond-encrusted ring. It represented two abstract foxes curled together, one facing each way. Each fox had two ears, two green alexandrite eyes, and a pointed nose.

And that was all. Of what use was a trinket like this to Stefan? It bore no resemblance to the double-winged keys shown in the pictures of kitsune shrines.

As treasure, it was surely worth a million times less than what they had already spent to get it.

And then Elena noticed something.

A light shone from the eyes of one of the foxes. If she hadn't been staring at it so closely, or if she hadn't been by now in the White Waltz Ballroom, where colors showed true, she might not have noticed it. But the light was shining straight ahead of her as she turned her hand sideways. Now it was shining from four eyes.

It was shining in exactly the direction of Stefan's prison cell.

Hope rose up like a phoenix in Elena's heart, and took her soaring on a mental journey out of this labyrinth of glass rooms. The music playing was the waltz from Faust. Away from the sun, deep into the heart of the city, that was where Stefan was. And that was where the pale green light from the fox's eyes was shining.

Riding high on hope, she turned the ring. The light winked out of both fox's eyes, but when she turned the ring so that the second fox was in line with Stefan's cell, it winked on.

Secret signals. How long could she have owned a ring like that and done nothing if she hadn't already known where Stefan's prison was?

Longer than Stefan had left to live, probably.

Now she only had to survive long enough to reach him.

Chapter 37

Elena had been tied, like someone in a B-movie who will soon be released, standing upright against a pillar. Digging on the field was still going on in a dilatory way as the vampires who had put her up to this fetched an ash stick they had brought, and allowed Damon to inspect it. Damon himself was moving in slow motion. Trying to find points to kibitz about. Waiting for the rattling of coach wheels that would tell him the carriage was back. Acting brisk, but inside feeling as sluggish as half-cooled lead.

I've never been a sadist, he thought. I've always tried to give pleasure - except in fights. But it should be me in that prison cell. Can't Elena see that? It's my turn beneath the lash now.

He had changed into his "magician clothes," taking as long as he dared without looking as if he wanted to put this off. And now there were somewhere between six and eight hundred creatures, waiting to see Elena's blood spill, to watch Elena's back cut and miraculously heal again.

All right. I'm as ready as I'll ever be to do this.

He came into his body, into the now of what was happening.

Elena swallowed. "Share the pain" she'd said - without in the least knowing how to do it. But here she was, like a sacrifice tied to a pillar, staring at Bloddeuwedd's house and waiting for the blows to come.

Damon was giving the crowd an introductory speech, talking gibberish and doing it very well. Elena found a particular window of the house to stare at. And then she realized that Damon was no longer speaking.

A touch of the rod against her back. A telepathic whisper.

Are you ready?

Yes, she said immediately, knowing that she wasn't. And then hearing, against dead silence, a swish through the air.

Bonnie's mind floating into hers. Meredith's mind flowing like a stream. The blow was a mere cuff, although Elena felt blood spill.

She could feel Damon's bewilderment. What should have been a sword slash was a mere slap. Painful, but definitely bearable.

And once again. The triumvirate portioned out the pain before Damon's mind could receive it.

Keep the triangle moving. And a third.

Two more to go. Elena allowed her gaze to wander over the house. Up to the third floor where Bloddeuwedd had to be enraged at what had become of her party.

One more to go. The voice of a guest coming back to her. "That library. She has more orbs than most public libraries, and" - with his voice dropping for a moment -  "they say she has all sorts of spheres up there. Forbidden ones. You know."

Elena hadn't known and still could still hardly imagine what might be forbidden here.

In her library, Bloddeuwedd, a single, lonely figure, moved in the brilliantly lighted great sphere to find a new orb. Inside the house music would be playing, different music in each different room. Outside, Elena could hear nothing.

The last blow. The triumvirate managed to handle it, allotting agonizing pain amongst four people. At least, Elena thought, my dress was already as red as it could be.

And then it was over, and Bonnie and Meredith were quarrelling with some of the vampire ladies who wanted to help bathe the blood from Elena's back, showing it once again unblemished and perfect, glowing golden in the sunlight.

Better keep them away, Elena thought rather drowsily to Damon; some of them may be compulsive nail-biters or finger-lickers. We can't afford for anyone to taste my blood and feel the life-force in it; not when I've gone through so much to conceal my aura.

Although there was clapping and cheering everywhere, no one had thought to untie Elena's wrists. So she stood leaning against the pillar, gazing at the library.

And then the world froze.

All around her was music and motion. She was the still point in a turning universe. But she had to get moving, and fast. She yanked hard at her bonds, lacerating herself.

"Meredith! Untie me! Cut these ropes, quick!"

Meredith obeyed hastily.

When Elena turned, she knew what she would see. The face - Damon's face, bewildered, half-resentful, half-humble. It was good enough for her, right then.

Damon, we need to get to the -

But then they were engulfed by a riot. Well-wishers, fans, skeptics, vampires begging for "a tiny taste," gogglers who wanted to make sure that Elena's back was real and warm and unmarked. Elena felt too many hands on her body.

"Get away from her, damn you!" It was the primal savage roar of a beast defending its mate. People backed away from Elena, only to close in...very slowly and timidly...on Damon.

All right, Elena thought. I'll do it alone. I can do it alone. For Stefan, I can.

She shouldered her way through the crowd, accepting bunches of hastily dug-up flowers from admirers - and feeling more hands on her body. "Hey, she really isn't marked!" At last, Meredith and Bonnie helped her to get out - without them she would never have made it.

And then she was running, running into the house, not bothering to use the door that was near to Saber's barking place. She thought she knew what was there anyway.

On the second floor she spent a minute being bewildered before seeing a thin red line in nothingness. Her blood! See how many things it was good for? Right now it highlighted the first of the glass steps for her, the one she had stumbled into before.

And at that time, cradled in Damon's strong arms, she hadn't been able to imagine even crawling up these steps. Now she channeled all the Power she had into her eye nodes - and the stairs lit up. It was still terrifying. There were no handholds on either side, and she was woozy from excitement, fear, and loss of blood. But she forced herself up, and up, and up.

"Elena! I love you! Elena!"

She could hear the cry as if Stefan were beside her now.

Up, up, up...

Her legs ached.

Keep going. No excuses. If you can't walk, hobble. If you can't hobble, crawl.

She was crawling as she finally reached the top, the edge of the nest of the owl Bloddeuwedd.

At least it was still a pretty, if insipid-looking, maiden who greeted her. Elena realized at last what was wrong with Bloddeuwedd's looks. She had no animal vitality. She was, at heart, a vegetable.

"I am going to kill you, you know."

No, she was a vegetable with no heart.

Elena glanced around her. She could see outside from here, although in between was the dome that was made of shelves and shelves upon shelves of orbs, so everything was weirdly distorted.

There were no hanging creepers here, no flagrant displays of exotic, tropical blooms. But she was already in the center of the room, in Bloddeuwedd's owl nest. Bloddeuwedd was nowhere near it; she was on the contraption that let her reach her star balls.

The key could only be buried in that nest.

"I don't want to steal from you," Elena promised, breathing hard. Even as she spoke, she plunged two arms into the nest. "Those kitsune played a trick on both of us. They stole something of mine and put the key to it in your nest. I'm just taking back what they put in."

"Ha! You - human slave! Barbarian! You dared to violate my private library! People outside are digging up my beautiful ballroom, my precious flowers. You think you're going to get away again this time, but you're not! This time you're going to DIE!"

It was an entirely different voice than the flat, nasal, but still maidenlike tones that had greeted Elena before. This was a powerful voice, a heavy voice...

...a voice to go with the size of the nest.

Elena looked up. She couldn't make anything of what she saw. An enormous fur coat in a very exotic pattern? Some huge stuffed animal's back?

The creature in the library turned toward her. Or rather, its head swiveled toward her, while its back remained perfectly still. It rotated its head sideways and Elena knew that what she was seeing was a face. The head was even more hideous and more indescribable than she could have imagined. It had a sort of single eyebrow which dipped from the edge of one side of its forehead down toward the nose (or where the nose should have been) and then went up again. The feature was like a gigantic V-shaped brow and below it were two huge round yellow eyes that often blinked. There was no nose or mouth like a human's, but instead there was a large, cruel, hooked black beak. The rest of the face was covered in feathers, mostly white, turning mottled gray at the bottom, where the neck seemed to be. It was also gray and white in two hornlike projections that shot up from the top of the head - like a demon's horns, Elena thought wildly.

Then, with the head still staring at her, the body turned toward Elena.

It was the body of a sturdy woman, covered in white and grizzled feathers, Elena saw. Talons peeked out from under the lowest feathers.

"Hello," the creature said in a grating voice, its beak opening and closing to bite off the words. "I'm Bloddeuwedd, and I never let anyone touch my library. I am your death."

The words Can't we at least talk about it first? were on Elena's lips. She didn't want to be a hero. She certainly didn't want to take on Bloddeuwedd while searching for the key that must be here - somewhere.

Elena kept on trying to explain while frantically feeling inside the nest, when Bloddeuwedd extended wings that spanned the room and came at her.

And then, like a streak of lightning, something zipped between them, giving out a raucous cry.

It was Talon. Sage must have given the hawk orders when he left her.

The owl seemed to shrink a little - the better to attack, thought Elena.

"Please let me explain. I haven't found it yet, but there is something in your nest that doesn't belong to you. It's mine - and - and Stefan's. And the kitsune hid it the night you had to chase them off your estate. Do you remember that?"

Bloddeuwedd didn't answer for a moment. Then she showed that she had a simple, one-size-fits-all-situations philosophy.

"You set foot into my private quarters. You die," she said and this time when she swooped by Elena, Elena could hear the clack of her beak coming together.

Again something small and bright dove at Bloddeuwedd, aiming for her eyes. The great owl had to take her attention off Elena in order to deal with it.

Elena gave up. Sometimes you just needed help. "Talon!" she cried, unsure of how much human speech Talon understood. "Try to keep her occupied - just for a minute!"

As the two birds darted and wheeled and shrieked around her, Elena tried to search with her arms, while ducking when she needed to. But that great black beak was always too close. Once it sliced into her arm, but Elena was on an adrenaline high, and she hardly felt the pain. She kept searching without a pause.

Finally, she realized what she should have done from the beginning. She snatched up an orb from its transparent rack.

"Talon!" she called. "Here!"

The falcon dove down toward her and there was a snap. But afterward Elena still had all her fingers and the hoshi no tama was gone.

Now, now, Elena truly heard a shriek of rage from Bloddeuwedd. The giant owl went after the hawk, but it was like a human trying to slap a fly - an intelligent fly.

"Give that orb back! It's priceless! Priceless!"

"You'll get it back as soon as I find what I'm looking for." Elena, mad with terror and soaked in hormones, climbed all the way inside the nest and began searching the marble bottom with her fingers.

Twice Talon saved her by dropping orbs with a crash to the ground as the huge owl Bloddeuwedd was headed toward Elena. Each time, the noise of the crash caused the owl to forget about Elena and try to attack the hawk. Then Talon snatched another orb and swept at great speed right under the owl's nose.

Elena was beginning to have a nightmare feeling that everything she had known just a half hour before was wrong.

She had been leaning against the canopy pole, exhausted, staring up into the library and the maiden who inhabited it and the words had simply flowed into her mind.

Bloddeuwedd's orb room...

Bloddeuwedd's globe room...

Bloddeuwedd's...star ball room......Bloddeuwedd's ballroom.

Two ways to take the same words. Two very different kinds of rooms.

It was just as she was remembering this that her fingers touched metal.

Chapter 36

"What?" shouted Damon over the music, while adding: Run - go! telepathically to Elena.

If it had merely been Elena's life, she would have been glad enough to die here with the thunderous beauty of Firebird all around her, rathr than facing those steep, invisible steps alone.

But it wasn't just her life. It was Stefan's life, too. Still, the flower maiden didn't look particularly menacing, and Elena couldn't summon up enough adrenaline to try making it down that hidous stairway.

Damon, let's both go. We have to search the Great Ballroom outside. Only you're strong enough....

A hesitation. Damon would rather fight than face that enormous, impossible green field outside, Elena thought.

But Bloddeuwedd, despite her words, was now spinning the room around them again, so that she, at the edge of some invisible walkway, could find the exact orb she wanted.

Damon lifted Elena in his arms and said: Shut your eyes.

Elena not only shut her eyes, but put her hands over them as well. If Damon was going to drop her, she wasn't going to help matters by shouting "Look out!" as he did it.

The sensations themselves were sickening enough. Damon leaped from step to step like an ibex. He seemed barely to touch the steps in going down and Elena wondered - quite suddenly - if anything were after them.

If so, it was information she needed to know. She began to lift her hands and heard Damon whisper-snarl "Keep them shut!" in a voice that few people liked to argue with.

Elena peeked out between her hands, met Damon's exasperated eyes, and saw nothing following them. She clamped her hands back together and prayed.

If you were really a slave, you wouldn't last a day here, you know, Damon informed her, taking a final leap into space and then setting her down on invisible - but at least level - ground.

I wouldn't want to, Elena sent coldly. I swear, I'd rather die.

Be careful what you promise, Damon flashed his splendid smile down at her suddenly. You may end up in other dimensions trying to fulfill your word.

Elena didn't even try to one-up him. They were out, free, and racing through the glass house down to the stairs to the lower floor - a little tricky in her state of mind, but bearable - and finally out the door. On the grass of the Great Ballroom they found Meredith and Bonnie...and Sage.

He was actually in white tie as well, although his jacket strained at his shoulders. In addition, Talon was sitting on one - so the problem might be taken care of fairly soon, as she was ripping the material and drawing blood. Sage didn't seem aware of it. Saber was at his master's side, looking at Elena with eyes too thoughtful to be mere animal eyes, but without malice.

"Thank God you came back!" Bonnie cried, running to them. "Sage came and he has a marvelous idea."

Even Meredith was excited. "You remember how Damon said we should have brought a diviner? Well, we have two now." She turned to Sage. "Please tell them."

"As a rule, I don't take these two to parties." Sage reached down to scratch under Saber's throat. "But a little bird told me that you might be in trouble." His hand moved up to stroke Talon, ruffling the falcon's feathers slightly. "So, dites-moi, please: Just how much have you two been handling the half-key you do possess?"

"I touched it tonight and in the beginning, the night we found it," said Elena. "But Lady Ulma handled it and Lucen made a chest for it and we've all handled that."

"But outside the box?"

"I've held it and looked at it once or twice," said Damon.

"Eh bien! The kitsune smells should be much stronger on it. And kitsune have very distinctive smells."

"So you mean that Saber - " Elena's voice gave out for pure faintness.

"Can sniff out anything with the smell of kitsune on it. Meanwhile, Talon has very good eyesight. She can fly overhead and look for the glint of gold in case it's in plain sight somewhere. Now show them what they will be searching for."

Elena obligingly held out the crescent shaped half-key for Saber to sniff.

"Voil��! And Talon, now you take a good look." Sage backed away to what was, Elena supposed, Talon's optimal seeing distance. Then when he came back, he said, " Commençons!" and the black dog exploded away, nose to ground, while the falcon took off in grand, high, sweeping circles.

"So you think the kitsune were on this grass?" Elena asked Sage, as Saber began racing back and forth, nose still just above the grass - and then suddenly veered out onto the middle of the marble steps.

"But assuredly, they were here. You see how Saber runs, like a black panther, with his head low, and his tail straight? He has business in hand, him! He is hot on the scent."

I know someone else who gives off the same feeling, Elena thought as she glanced back at Damon, who stood with his arms folded, motionless, coiled like a spring, waiting for whatever news the animals would bring.

She happened to glance at Sage at the same moment, and she saw an expression on his face that - well, it was probably the same expression she'd been wearing a minute ago. He glanced at her and she blushed.

"Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur," she said, looking away quickly.

"Parlez-vous français, Madame?"

"Un peu," Elena said humbly - an unusual condition for her. "I can't really keep up a serious conversation. But I loved going to France." She was about to say something else, when Saber barked once, sharply, to attract attention and then sat bolt upright at the curb.

"They came or left in a carriage or litter," Sage translated.

"But what did they do in the house? I need a trail going the other way," Damon said, looking up at Sage with something like raw desperation.

"All right, all right. Saber! Contremarche!"

The black dog instantly turned around, put its nose to the ground as if it afforded him the greatest delight, and began running back and forth across the stairs and the lawn that formed the "Great Ballroom" - now becoming pitted with holes as people took shovels, pickaxes, and even large spoons to it.

"Kitsune are hard to catch," Elena murmured into Damon's ear.

He nodded, glancing at his watch. "I hope we are, too," he murmured back.

There was a sharp bark from Saber. Elena's heart leaped in her chest.

"What?" she cried. "What is it?" Damon passed her, grabbed her hand, and dragged her in his wake.

"What has he found?" Elena gasped as they all reached the same point simultaneously.

"I don't know. It's not part of the Great Ballroom," replied Meredith. Saber was sitting up proudly in front of a bed of tall, clustering pale lavender (deep violet) hydrangeas.

"They don't look like they're doing too well," said Bonnie.

"And it's not below any of the upper ballrooms, either," Meredith said, stooping to get at Saber's height and then look up. "There's just the library."

"Well, I know one thing without a question," Damon said. "We're going to have to dig up this flower patch and I don't fancy asking Ms. Larkspur-eyes-Now-I-have-to-kill-you for her permission."

"Oh, did you think they were larkspur, her eyes? Because I thought of bluebells, rahthah," said a guest behind Bonnie.

"Did she really say she had to kill you? But why?" another guest, nearer to Elena asked nervously.

Elena ignored them. "Well, let's put it this way, she's certainly not going to like it. But it's the only clue we've got." Except, I suppose, if the kitsune meant to leave it here, but then took off in a coach, she added voicelessly to Damon.

"So that means the show can commence," cried one of the young vampire fans, stepping toward Elena.

"But I don't have my amulet back," Damon said flatly, moving in front of Elena like an impenetrable wall.

"But you will in minutes, surely. Look, couldn't some fellows backtrack with the dog to wherever the bad guys came from - came to the estate from, if you get me? And meanwhile we can be getting on with the show?"

"Can Saber do that?" Damon asked. "Follow a carriage?"

"With a fox in it? But of course. Actually, I could go with them," Sage said quietly. "I could make sure that these two enemies are caught if they are on the other end of the trail. Show them to me."

"These are the only shapes I know." Damon reached out two fingers and touched Sage's temple. "But, of course, they'll have more forms, possibly infinite ones."

"Well, they are not our priority, I assume. The, ah, amulet is."

"Yes," Damon said. "Even if you don't land a blow on them, get the key half and race back."

"So? Even more important than revenge," Sage said softly, shaking his head in wonder. Then he added quickly. "Well, I will wish us good luck. Any adventurous types who want to go with me? Ah, good, four - very well, five, Madame - is enough."

And he was gone.

Elena looked at Damon, who was looking back with blank, black eyes. "You really expect me to do - that - again?"

"All you need to do is stand there. I'll make sure you lose as little blood as possible. And if you ever want to stop we can have a signal."

"Yes, but now I understand. And I can't handle it."

His face went cold suddenly. Shutting her out.

"You're not required to handle anything. Besides, isn't it enough if I say it's a fair bargain for Stefan?"

Stefan! Elena's entire body went through some sort of elemental change. "Let me share it," she begged, and knew that she was begging and knew what Damon was going to say.

"Stefan is going to need you when we get out. Just make sure you can handle that."

Stop. Think. Don't bash his head in, Elena's brain told her. He's pushing your buttons. He knows how to do it. Don't let him push your buttons.

"I can handle both," she said. "Please, Damon. Don't treat me as if I were - one of your one-nighters, or even your Princess of Darkness. Talk to me as if I were Sage."

"Sage? Sage is the most frustrating, cunning - "

"I know. But you talk to him. And you used to talk to me, and now you're not. Listen to me. I can't bear to go through this scenario again. I'll scream."

"Now you're threatening - "

"No! I'm telling you what will happen. Unless you gag me, I'll scream. And scream. As I would scream for Stefan. I can't help it. Maybe I'm breaking down...."

"But don't you see?" Suddenly he had whirled around and taken hold of her hands. "We're almost at the end. You, who've been the strongest all along - you can't break down now."

"The strongest..." Elena was shaking her head. "I thought we were right there, on the verge of understanding each other."

"All right." His words came as hard chips of marble now. "What if we do five?"

"Five?"

"Five strokes instead of ten. We'll promise to do the other five when the 'amulet' is found, but we'll run when we do find it."

"You would have to break your word."

"If it takes that - "

"No," she said flatly. "You say nothing. I'll tell them. I'm a liar and a cheat and I've always played with men. We'll see if I can't finally put my talents to good use. And there's no point in trying any of the other girls," she added, glancing up. "Bonnie and Meredith are wearing gowns that would fall right off if you slashed them. Only I have a bare back." She pirouetted in place to show off how her dress met only very high at the neck in a halter and very low in the back in a V.

"Then we're agreed." Damon had a slave refill his goblet and Elena thought: we're going to be the tipsiest act in history, if nothing else.

She couldn't help but shiver. The last time she had felt an inner trembling was from Damon's warm hand on her bare back as they danced. Now, she felt something much icier, just a draft of cold air perhaps. But it drew her mind to the feeling of her own blood running down her sides.

Suddenly Bonnie and Meredith were there beside her, forming a barricade between her and the increasingly curious and excited crowd.

"Elena, what's happened? They said a barbarian human girl was to be whipped - " began Meredith.

"And you just knew it had to be me," completed Elena. "Well, it's true. I don't see how I can get out of it."

"But what have you done?" Bonnie asked frantically.

"Been an idiot. Let some fraternity-type vampire boys think that it was a sort of magic act," Damon put in. His face was still grim.

"That's a little unfair, isn't it?" Meredith asked. "Elena told us about the first time. It sounded as if they jumped to the conclusion that it was an act all by themselves."

"We should have denied it then. Now, we're stuck with it," Damon said flatly. Then, as if he were making an effort, "Oh, well, maybe we'll get what we came for, anyway."

"That was how we found out - some idiot came running down the steps yelling about an amulet with two green stones."

"It was all we could think of," Elena explained wearily. "It's worth it for Damon and I to do this if only we can find the other half of the key."

"You don't have to do it," Meredith said. "We can just leave."

Bonnie stared at her. "Without the fox key?"

Elena shook her head. "We've already been through all that. The unanimous decision was to do it this way. She looked around. "Now where are the guys that wanted to see it so much?"

"Looking in the field - that used to be a ballroom," Bonnie replied. "Or getting shovels - lots of 'em - from Bloddeuwedd's gardening compound. Ow! Why'd you pinch me, Meredith?"

"Oh, my, did that pinch? I meant to do this - "

But Elena was already striding away, as eager now as Damon was to get it over with. Half over with. I just hope he remembers to change into his leather jacket and black jeans, she thought. In white tie - the blood -

I won't let there be any blood.

The thought was sudden and Elena didn't know where it came from. But in the deepest reaches of her being, she thought: he's been punished enough. He was trembling in the litter. He thought about another person's well-being from minute to minute. It's enough now. Stefan wouldn't want him to be hurt any more.

She glanced up to see one of the Dark Dimension's small, misshapen moons moving visibly above her. This time the surrender she made to it was bright red, a feather shining in sullen crimson light. But she gave herself up to it unreservedly, body and soul, and it rested on the hallowed spring of eternal blood that was her womanhood. And then she knew what she had to do.

"Bonnie, Meredith, look: we're a triumvirate. We have to try to share this with Damon."

No one looked enthusiastic.

Elena, whose pride had been entirely broken from the moment she first saw Stefan in his cell, knelt down in front of them on the hard marble step. "I'm begging you - "

"Elena! Stop that!" Meredith gasped.

"Please get up! Oh, Elena - " Bonnie was a breath away from tears.

And so, it was small, softhearted Bonnie who turned the tide. "I'll try to teach Meredith how. But anyway, we'll at least share it between the three of us."

Hug. Kiss. A murmur into strawberry hair, "I know what you see in the dark. You're the bravest person I know."

And then, leaving a stunned Bonnie behind, Elena went to collect spectators for her own whipping.