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The Vampire Diaries #6: Shadow Souls (The Return Trilogy #2) (2010)

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21#
发表于 2016-9-21 15:58 | 只看该作者
Chapter 20

Elena had seldom felt such relief as she did when she heard Damon's knock at Dr. Meggar's door.

"What happened at the Meeting Place?" she asked.

"I never made it there." Damon explained about the ambush, while the others covertly studied Sage with varying degrees of approval, gratitude, or sheer lust. Elena realized that she'd had too much Black Magic when she felt ready to pass out at several points - although she was sure that the wine had helped Damon to survive a mob attack which might otherwise have killed him.

They, in turn, explained Lady Ulma's story as briefly as possible. The woman was looking white and shaken by the end.

"I do hope," she said timidly to Damon, "that when you inherit Old Drohzne's property" - she paused to swallow - "that you'll decide to keep me. I know the slaves you brought with you are beautiful and young...but I can make myself very useful as a needlewoman and such. It's just my back that's lost its strength, not my mind...."

Damon was perfectly still for a moment. Then he walked over to Elena, who happened to be closest to him. He reached up, unclasped the last loop of rope that had been trailing from Elena's wrist, and threw it hard across the room. It whipped and wiggled like a snake. "Anyone else wearing one can do the same thing, as far as I'm concerned," he said.

"Except the throwing," Meredith said quickly, seeing the doctor's eyebrow clashing as he looked at the many breakable glass beakers stacked along the walls. But she and Bonnie lost no time in losing any final vestige of rope that was still trailing.

"I'm afraid mine are...permanent," Lady Ulma said, pulling the fabric away from her wrists to expose the welded-on iron bracelets. She looked ashamed at being unable to obey her new master's first command.

"Do you mind a moment of cold? I have enough Power to freeze them so they'll shatter," Damon said.

There was a soft sound from Lady Ulma. Elena thought she had never heard such desperation in any one human noise. "I could stand in snow to my neck for a year to get these awful things off," the Lady said.

Damon put his hands on either side of one bracelet and Elena could feel the rush of Power that emanated from him. There was a sharp cracking sound. Damon moved his hands and came up with two separate pieces of metal.

Then he did it again, on the other side.

The look in Lady Ulma's eyes made Elena feel more humble than proud. She had saved one woman from terrible degradation. But how many more remained? She would never know, or be able to save them all if she found out. Not with her Power in the state it was now.

"I think Lady Ulma really ought to get some rest," Bonnie said, rubbing her own forehead under tumbled strawberry curls. "And Elena, too. You should have seen how many stitches her leg took, Damon. But what do we do, go look for a hotel?"

"Use my house," said Dr. Meggar, one eyebrow up and one down. Obviously, he had become enmeshed in this story, swept along by its sheer power and beauty - and brutality. "All I ask is that you don't destroy anything, and that if you see a frog, don't kiss it, and don't kill it. There are plenty of blankets and chairs and couches."

He wouldn't take a single link from the heavy gold chain Damon had brought to use as income in exchange.

"I...by rights I should help you all get ready for bed," Lady Ulma murmured faintly to Meredith.

"You're the worst hurt of all; you should get the best bed," Meredith replied tranquilly. "And we will help you get into it."

"The most comfortable bed...that would be in my daughter's old room." Dr. Meggar fumbled with a ring of keys. "She married a porter - how I hated to see her go. And this young lady, Miss Elena, can have the old bridal chamber."

For an instant Elena's heart was torn by conflicting emotions. She was afraid - yes, she was very sure it was fear she felt - that Damon might sweep her up in his arms and make for the bridal suite with her. And on the other hand...

Just then Lakshmi looked up at her uncertainly. "Do you want me to leave?" she asked.

"Do you have anywhere to go?" Elena asked in turn.

"The street, I guess. I usually sleep in a barrel."

"Stay here. Come with me; a bridal bed sounds big enough for two people. You're one of us, now."

The look Lakshmi gave her was one of sheer thunderstruck gratitude. Not at being given a place to stay, Elena understood. For the statement, "You're one of us, now." Elena could feel that Lakshmi had never been "one of" any group before.

Things were quiet until almost "dawn" the next "day," as the city's inhabitants called it, although the light hadn't varied all night.

This time a different sort of crowd had gathered outside the doctor's complex. It was mostly made up of elderly men wearing threadbare but clean robes - but there were a few old women, too. They were led by a silver-haired man who had a strange air of dignity.

Damon, with Sage as backup, went outside the doctor's complex and spoke to them.

Elena was dressed but still upstairs in the quiet bridal suite.

Dear Diary,

Oh, God, I need help! Oh, Stefan - I need you. I need you to forgive me. I need you to keep me sane. Too much time around Damon and I'm completely emotional, ready to kill him or to...or to - I don't know. I don't know!!! We're like flint and tinder together - God! We're like gasoline and a flamethrower! Please hear me and help me and save me...from myself. Every time he even says my name...

"Elena."

The voice behind Elena made her jump. She slammed the diary shut and turned around.

"Yes, Damon?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh, great. Fine. Even my leg is b - I mean, I'm fine all over. How are you feeling?"

"I'm...well enough," he said, and he smiled - and it was a real smile, not a snarl twisted into something else at the last second, or an attempt to manipulate. It was just a smile, if a rather worried and sad one.

Elena somehow didn't notice the sadness until she remembered it later. She simply suddenly felt that she weighed nothing; that if she lost grip on herself she could be miles high before anyone could stop her - miles away, maybe even as far as this insane place's moons.

She managed a shaky smile of her own at him. "That's good."

"I came to talk to you," he said, "but...first - "

In another moment, somehow, Elena was in his arms.

"Damon - we can't keep on..." She tried to pull away gently. "We really can't keep doing this, you know."

But Damon didn't let go of her. There was something in the way he held her that half terrified her, and half made her want to cry with joy. She forced back the tears.

"It's all right," Damon said softly. "Go ahead and cry. We've got a situation on our hands."

Something in his voice frightened Elena. Not in the half-joyful way she'd been fearful a minute ago, but entirely frightened.

It's because he's afraid, she thought suddenly in wonderment. She had seen Damon angry, wistful, cold, mocking, seductive - even subdued, ashamed - but she had never seen him afraid of anything. She could hardly get her mind around the concept. Damon...frightened...for her.

"It's because of what I did yesterday, isn't it?" she asked. "Are they going to kill me?" She was surprised at how calmly she said it. She felt nothing except a vague distress and the desire to make Damon not afraid anymore.

"No!" He held her at arm's length, staring. "At least not without killing me and Sage - and all the people in this house, too, if I know them." He stopped, seeming out of breath - which was impossible, Elena reminded herself. He's playing for time, she thought.

"But that's what they want to do," she said. She didn't know why she was so certain. Maybe she was picking up something telepathically.

"They have...made threats," Damon said slowly. "It's not the case of Old Drohzne really; I guess there are murders around here all the time and winner takes all. But apparently overnight word of what you did has been spreading. Slaves in nearby estates are refusing to obey their masters. This entire quarter of the slums is in turmoil - and they're afraid of what will happen if other sectors hear about it. Something has to be done as soon as possible or the whole Dark Dimension may just explode like a bomb."

Even as Damon spoke, Elena could hear the echoes of what he'd been told by the assembly who had come to Dr. Meggar's door. They had been afraid, too.

Maybe this could be the start of something important, Elena thought, her mind soaring away from her own small problems. Even death wouldn't be too high a price to pay to free these wretched people from their demonic masters.

"But that's not what will happen!" Damon said, and Elena realized that she must be projecting her thoughts. There was genuine anguish in Damon's voice. "If we had planned things, if there were leaders who could stay here and oversee a revolution - if we could even find leaders strong enough to do it - then there might be a chance. Instead, all the slaves are being punished, everywhere that the word has spread. They're being tortured and killed on mere suspicion of sympathy with you. Their masters are making examples all over the city. And it's only going to get worse."

Elena's heart, which had been soaring on a dream of actually making a difference, came crashing down to the ground and she stared, horrified, into Damon's black eyes. "But we've got to stop that. Even if I have to die - "

Damon pulled her back in close to him. "You - and Bonnie and Meredith." His voice sounded hoarse. "Plenty of people saw the three of you together. Plenty of people now see all three of you as the troublemakers."

Elena's heart went cold. Maybe the worst thing was that she could see from a slave economy's point of view that if one incident of such insolence went unpunished and word of it spread...the tale would grow in the telling....

"We became famous overnight. We'll be legends tomorrow," she murmured, watching, in her mind, a domino toppling into another which hit another until a long string had fallen down spelling the word "Heroine."

But she didn't want to be a heroine. She had just come here to get Stefan back. And while she could have faced giving her life to stop slaves from being tortured and killed, she would herself kill anyone who tried to lay a hand on Bonnie or Meredith.

"They feel the same way," Damon said. "They heard what the congregation had to say." He held her arms hard as if trying to brace her. "A young girl named Helena was beaten and hung this morning because she had a similar name to yours. She was fifteen."

Elena's legs gave out, as so often they had done in Damon's arms...but never for this reason. He went with her. This was a conversation you had sitting on bare floorboards. "It wasn't your fault, Elena! You are what you are! People love you for what you are!"

Elena's pulse was hammering frantically. It was all so bad...but she had made it worse. By not thinking. By imagining that her life was the only one at stake. By acting before evaluating the consequences.

But in the same situation she would do it again. Or...with shame, she thought, I would do something like it. If I knew that I would put everyone I loved in danger I would have begged Damon to bargain with that slave-owner worm. Buy her for some outrageous price...if we had the money. If he would have listened...If another stroke of the whip hadn't killed Lady Ulma...

Suddenly her brain went hard and cold.

That is the past.

This is the present.

Deal with it.

"What can we do?" She tried to pull free and shake Damon; she was that frantic. "There must be something we can do now! They can't kill Bonnie and Meredith - and Stefan will die if we don't find him!"

Damon just held her more tightly. He was keeping his mind shielded from hers, Elena realized. This could either be good or bad. It might be that there was a solution he was reluctant to put to her. Or it could mean that the death of all three of the "rebel slaves" was the only thing the city leaders would accept.

"Damon." He was holding her much too tightly to get free, so Elena couldn't look him in the face. But she could visualize it, and she could also try to address him squarely, mind to mind.

Damon, if there's anything -  even any way we can save Bonnie and Meredith - you have to tell me. You have to. I order you to!

Neither of them were in a mood to find that amusing or even to notice the "slave" giving orders to the "master." But at last Elena heard Damon's telepathic voice.

They say that if I take you back to Young Drohzne now and you apologize, that you can be let off with just six strokes of this. From somewhere Damon produced a pliant cane made of some pale wood. Ash, probably, Elena thought, surprised at how calm she was. It's the one substance equally effective on everyone: even on vampires - even on Old Ones, which they undoubtedly have around here.

But it has to be in public so that they can get the rumors started the other way. They think then that the turmoil will stop, if you - the one who started the disobedience - will admit your slave status.

Damon's thoughts were heavy, and so was Elena's heart. How many of her principles would she be betraying if she did this? How many slaves would she be condemning to lives of servitude?

Suddenly Damon's mental voice was angry. We didn't come here to reform the Dark Dimension, he reminded her, in tones that made Elena wince away. Damon shook her slightly. We came to get Stefan, remember? Needless to say, we'll never have a chance to do that if we try to play Spartacus. If we start a war that we know we can't win. Even the Guardians can't win it.

A light went on in Elena's mind.

"Of course," she said. "Why didn't I think of it before?"

"Think of what before?" Damon said desperately.

"We don't fight the war - now. I haven't even mastered my basic Powers, much less my Wings Powers. And this way they won't even wonder about them."

"Elena?"

"We come back," Elena explained to him excitedly. "When I can control all my Powers. And we bring allies with us - strong allies we'll find in the human world. It may take years and years but someday we come back and finish what we started."

Damon was staring at her as if she'd gone mad, but that didn't matter. Elena could feel Power coursing through her. This was one promise, she thought, that she would keep if it killed her.

Damon swallowed. "Can we talk about - about the present now?" he asked.

It was as if he had hit a bull's-eye.

The present. Now.

"Yes. Yes, of course." Elena looked at the ash cane contemptuously. "Of course, I'll do it, Damon. I don't want anyone else hurt because of me before I'm ready to fight. Dr. Meggar is a good healer. If they allow me to come back to him."

"I honestly don't know," Damon said, holding her gaze. "But I do know one thing. You won't feel a single blow, I promise you that," he said quickly and earnestly, his dark eyes very big. "I'll take care of that; it'll all be channeled away. And you won't even see a trace of a mark by morning. But," he finished much more slowly, "you'll have to kneel to apologize to me, your owner, and to that filthy, scrofulous, abominable old - " Damon's imprecations carried him away for a moment so that he lapsed into Italian.

"To who?"

"To the leader of the slums, and possibly to Old Drohzne's brother, Young Drohzne, as well."

"Okay. Tell them I'll apologize to as many Drohznes as they want.

Tell them quick, in case we lose our chance."

Elena could see the look he gave her, but her mind was turned inward. Would she let Meredith or Bonnie do this? No. Would she allow it to happen to Caroline if by any means she could stop it? Again, no. No, no, no. Elena's feelings about brutality toward girls and women had always been exceedingly strong. Her feelings about the worldwide second-class citizenship of females had become remarkably clear since her return from the afterlife. If she had been returned to the world for any purpose, she had decided, helping to free girls and women from the slavery that many of them could not even see, was part of it.

But this wasn't just about a vicious slaveholder and faceless oppressed women and men. It was about Lady Ulma, and keeping her and her baby safe...and it was about Stefan. If she gave in, she would be just an impudent slave who caused a small ruckus in the road, but was firmly put back into her place by authorities.

Otherwise, if their party was scrutinized...if someone realized that they were here to release Stefan...if Elena was the one who caused the order to come: "Move him into stricter security - get rid of that silly kitsune-key thing...."

Her mind was ablaze with images of ways that Stefan could be punished, could be taken away, could be lost if this incident in the slums took on undue proportions.

No. She would not abandon Stefan now to fight a war that could not be won. But she wouldn't forget, either.

I'll come back for all of you, she promised. And then the story will have a different ending.

She realized that Damon still hadn't left. He was watching her with eyes as keen as a falcon's. "They sent me to bring you," he said quietly. "They never thought of a no for an answer." Elena could briefly feel the fierce rage of his fury at them and she took his hand and squeezed it.

"I'm coming back with you in the future, for the slaves," he said. "You know that, don't you?"

"Of course," said Elena, and her quick kiss became a longer kiss. She hadn't really absorbed what Damon had said about channeling away the pain. She felt she was due just one kiss for what she was about to endure, and then Damon stroked her hair and time meant nothing until Meredith knocked at the door.

The bloody-red dawn had taken on a bizarre, almost dreamlike quality by the time Elena was led to an open-air structure where the slumlords in charge of this area were seated on piles of once fine, now threadbare cushions. They were passing back and forth bottles and jeweled leather flasks filled with Black Magic, the only wine vampires could really enjoy, smoking hookahs and occasionally spitting into the darker shadows. This was regardless of the huge audience of street people dizzily attracted by word of a beautiful young human's public punishment.

Elena had been rehearsed in her lines. She was marched, gagged, hands manacled, before the hawking and spitting authorities. Young Drohzne was sitting in somewhat uncomfortable glory on a golden couch, and Damon was standing between him and the authorities, looking tense. Elena had never been so tempted to improvise a part since her junior play, when she had thrown a flowerpot at Petruchio and brought down the house in the last scene of The Taming of the Shrew.

But this was deadly serious business. Stefan's freedom, Bonnie's and Meredith's lives might depend upon it. Elena moved her tongue around inside her mouth, which was bone dry.

And, oddly, she found Damon's eyes, the man with the stick, uplifting her. He seemed to be telling her courage and indifference without using telepathy at all. Elena wondered if he himself had ever been in a similar situation.

She was kicked by one of her escorts and remembered where she was. She'd been loaned an "appropriate" costume from the discarded wardrobe of Dr. Meggar's married daughter. It was pearl-colored indoors, which meant it was mauve in the everlasting crimson sunlight. Most important, worn without its silken undershirt, its back plunged to below Elena's waistline, leaving Elena's own back completely bare. Now, in accordance with custom, she knelt in front of the elders, and bowed until her forehead rested on an ornate and very dirty carpet at the feet of the elders, but several steps lower. One of them spat on her.

There was excited, appreciative chattering, and ribaldry, and thrown missiles, mostly in the form of garbage. Fruit was too precious here to think of wasting. Dried excrement, however, was not, and Elena found the first tears coming to her eyes as she realized what she was being pelted with.

Courage and indifference, she told herself, not even daring to sneak a look up at Damon.

Presently, when the crowd was felt to have had its due playtime, one of the hookah-smoking civic elders stood up. He read words Elena couldn't understand from a creased scroll. It seemed to go on forever. Elena, on her knees, with her forehead against the dusty carpet, felt as if she were smothering.

At last the scroll was put away and Young Drohzne leaped up and described in a high, almost hysterical voice, and flamboyant language, the story of a slave who attacked her own master (Damon, Elena noted mentally) to tear herself free of his supervision, and then attacked the head of his family (Old Drohzne, Elena thought) and his poor means of living, his cart, and his hopeless, impudent, slothful slave, and how all this had resulted in the death of his brother. To Elena's ears, at first, he seemed to be blaming Lady Ulma for the entire incident because she had fallen under her load.

"You all know the kind of slave I mean - she wouldn't bother to wave away a fly walking across her eye," he shrieked, appealing to the crowd, which responded with fresh insults and a renewed pelting upon Elena, since Lady Ulma wasn't there to punish.

At last, Young Drohzne finished recounting how this bold-faced hussy (Elena) who, wearing trousers like a man, had caught up his brother's own ne'er-do-well slave (Ulma) and had carried away this valuable property bodily away (all by myself? Elena wondered ironically) and had taken her to the home of a highly suspicious healer (Dr. Meggar), who now refused to give her, the original slave, back.

"I knew when I heard this that I would never see my brother or his slave again," he cried, in the shrieking wail that he had somehow been able to maintain throughout the entire narrative.

"If the slave was so lazy, you should have been glad," a joker in the crowd called out.

"Nevertheless," said a very fat man whose voice reminded Elena irresistibly of Alfred Hitchcock's: the lugubrious delivery and the same pauses before important words, which served to make the mood more grim and entire business even more serious than anyone had heretofore thought. This was a man with power, Elena realized. The ribaldry, the pelting, even the hawking and spitting had fallen silent. The large man was undoubtedly the local equivalent of a "godfather" to these painfully poor residents of the slums. His word would be that which determined Elena's fate.

"And since then," he was saying slowly, crunching with every few words some irregularly shaped, golden-colored sweetmeat from a bowl reserved for himself, "the young vampire Damien has made reparation - and most generously, too - for all the property damage." Here there was a long pause as he stared at Young Drohzne. "Therefore, his slave, Aliana, who started all this mischief will not be seized and put up for public auction, but will make her humble obeisance and surrender, here, and of her own will, receive the punishment she knows is her due."

Elena found herself dazed. She didn't know whether it was from all the smoke that had floated down to her level before curling away, but the words "put up for public auction" had sent a shock through her that almost led her to black out. She had had no idea that that could happen - and the pictures it brought to mind were extremely unpleasant. She also noticed her new alias, and Damon's. It was actually quite fortunate, she thought since it would be nice if Shinichi and Misao never heard about this little adventure.

"Bring the slave to us," the fat man concluded, and sat back down on a great pile of cushions.

Elena was lifted off her feet and roughly marched upward until she could see the man's gilded sandals, and remarkably clean feet, as she kept her eyes down in the manner of an obedient slave.

"Have you heard these proceedings?" The Godfather-type was still munching on his delicacies and a waft of breeze brought a heavenly smell to Elena's nose, and suddenly all the saliva she could ask for flooded to her dry lips.

"Yes, sir," she said, not knowing what title to give him.

"You address me as Your Excellence. And do you have anything to add in your defense?" the man asked, to Elena's astonishment. Her automatic response of: "Why ask me, since it's all been fixed up beforehand?" was stilled on her lips. This man was somehow - more - than any of the others she had met in the Dark Dimension - in fact, in her entire life. He listened to people. He would listen to me if I told him all about Stefan, Elena thought suddenly. But then, she thought, regaining her normal level-headedness, what could he do about it? Nothing, unless he could do some good and turn a profit out of it - or gain some power, or take down an enemy.

Still, he might make for an ally when she returned to level this place and freed the slaves.

"No, Your Excellence. Nothing to add," she said.

"And you are willing to prostrate yourself and beg my forgiveness and that of Master Drohzne?"

This was Elena's first scripted line. "Yes," she said, and she managed to get through her prefabricated apology clearly and with just the hint of a gulp at the end. Up close she could see flecks of gold on the large man's face, in his lap, in his beard.

"Very well. A penalty of ten ash rod strokes is laid upon this slave as an example to other mischief-makers. The punishment will be delivered by my nephew Clewd."
22#
发表于 2016-9-21 16:00 | 只看该作者
Chapter 21

Pandemonium. Elena whipped her head up, confused as to whether she was supposed to be the repentant slave any longer. The community leaders were all babbling at one another, pointing fingers, throwing up their hands. Damon had physically restrained the Godfather, who seemed to regard his part in the ceremony as concluded.

The crowd was hooting and cheering. It looked as if there would be another fight; this time between Damon and the Godfather's men, especially the one called Clewd.

Elena's head was whirling. She could catch only disjointed phrases.

" - only six strokes and promised me that I could administer - " Damon was shouting.

" - really think that these little flunkies tell the truth?" someone else - probably Clewd - was shouting back.

But isn't that exactly what the Godfather was, too? Just a bigger, more frightening, and, undoubtedly, more efficient flunky who reported to someone higher up, and didn't cloud his mind with dope-smoke? Elena thought; and then ducked her head hastily as the fat man glanced toward her.

She could hear Damon again, this time clearly above the hubbub. He was standing by the Godfather. "I had believed that even here there was some honor once a bargain was struck." His voice made it obvious that he no longer thought negotiations were possible and that he was about to go on the attack. Elena tensed, horrified. She had never heard such open menace in his speaking voice.

"Wait." It was in the Godfather's lackadaisical tones, but it caused an instant of silence in the babble. The fat man, having removed Damon's hand from his arm, turned his head back toward Elena.

"I will waive, for my part, the participation of my nephew Clewd. Diarmund, or whoever you were, you are free to punish your own slave with your own tools."

Suddenly, surprisingly, the old man was brushing bits of gold out of his beard and speaking directly to Elena. His eyes were ancient, tired, and surprisingly discerning. "Clewd is a master at whipping, you know. He has his own little invention. He calls it the cat's whiskers and one blow can flay the skin from neck to hip. Most men die from ten lashes. But I'm afraid he'll be disappointed today." Then exposing surprisingly white and even teeth, the Godfather smiled. He extended to her the bowl of golden sweetmeats he'd been eating. "You might as well taste one before your Discipline. Go on."

Afraid to try one, afraid not to, Elena took one of the irregular pieces and popped it in her mouth. Her teeth crunched pleasantly. A walnut half! That's what the mysterious sweets were. A delicious half walnut dipped in some kind of sweet lemon syrup, with bits of hot pepper or something like that clinging to it, all gilded with that edible gold stuff. Ambrosia!

The Godfather was saying to Damon, "Do your own 'discipline,' boy. But don't neglect to teach the girl how to cover her thoughts. She has too much wit to be wasted here in a slum-brothel. But then why do I not think she wishes to become a famous courtesan at all?"

Before Damon could answer or Elena look up from her genuflection, he was gone, carried by palanquin bearers to the only horse-drawn carriage Elena had seen in the slums.

By now the arguing, gesticulating civic leaders, egged on by Young Drohzne, had come to a sullen agreement. "Ten lashes, and she need not strip, and you may give them," they said. "But our final word is ten. The man who negotiated with you has no more power to argue."

Almost casually, one lifted by a tuft of hair a bodiless head. Absurdly, it was crowned with dusty leaves in anticipation of the banquet after the ceremony.

Damon's eyes flared with true rage that set objects around him vibrating. Elena could feel his Power like a panther rearing back against a leash. She felt as if she were speaking against a hurricane which cast every word back into her throat.

"I agree to it."

"What?"

"It's over, Da - Master Damon. No more yelling. I agree."

Now, as she prostrated herself on the carpets before Drohzne, there was a sudden keening of women and children and a fusillade of pellets aimed - sometimes badly - at the smirking slave owner.

The train of her dress was spread behind her like a bride's, the pearl overskirt making the underskirt a shimmering burgundy in the eternal red light. Her hair had fallen free of its high knot, making a cloud around her shoulders that Damon had to part with his hands. He was shaking. From fury. Elena didn't dare look at him, knowing that their minds would rush together. She was the one who remembered to say her formal speech before him and Young Drohzne so this entire farce would not have to be reenacted.

Say it with feeling, her drama teacher, Ms. Courtland, had always excoriated the class. If there was no feeling in you there could be none in the audience.

"Master!" Elena shouted in a voice that was loud enough to be heard above the women's lamentations. "Master, I am but a slave, not fit to address you. But I have trespassed and I accept my punishment eagerly - yea, eagerly, if it will restore to you but one hairsbreadth of the respectability you enjoyed before my unwonted evildoing. I beg you to punish this disgraced slave who lies like discarded offal in your gracious path."

The speech, which she had shouted in the unvarying glassy tones of someone who had been taught each word by rote, hadn't actually needed to be more than four words, "Master, I beg forgiveness." But no one seemed to have recognized the irony that Meredith had put into it, or to find it amusing. The Godfather had accepted it; Young Drohzne had already heard it once, and now it was Damon's turn.

But Young Drohzne wasn't finished yet. Smirking at Elena, he said, "Here's where you find out, Missy. But I want to see that ash rod before you use it!" - stumbling to Damon. A few practice swishes and blows to the cushions surrounding them (which filled the air with ruby-colored dust) satisfied him that the rod was all that even he could want.

Mouth visibly watering, he settled on the gold couch, taking in Elena from head to toe.

And finally the time had come. Damon couldn't put it off any longer. Slowly, as if every step was part of a play that he hadn't rehearsed properly, he sidled alongside Elena to get an angle. Finally, as the gathered crowd became restless, and the women showed signs of losing themselves in drink, rather than in keening, he picked his spot.

"I ask forgiveness, my master," Elena said in her no-expression voice. If left to himself, she thought, he wouldn't even have remembered the necessities.

Now, indeed, was the time. Elena knew what Damon had promised her. She also knew that a lot of promises had been broken that day. For one thing, ten was almost twice six.

She wasn't looking forward to this.

But when the first blow came, she knew that Damon wasn't one of the promise-breakers. She felt a dull thud, and a numbness, and then, curiously, a wetness which had her glancing up through the latticework of boards above them for clouds. It was disconcerting to realize that the wetness was her own blood, spilled without pain, running down her side.

"Make her count them," Young Drohzne slurred in a snarl, and Elena said "One" automatically, before Damon could put up a fight.

Elena went on counting in the same clear, unaffected voice. In her mind she wasn't here, in this foul-smelling horrible gutter at all. She was lying with her elbows propped up to support her face, and looking down into Stefan's eyes - those spring-green eyes that would never be old, no matter how many centuries he accumulated. She was dreamily counting for him, and ten would be their signal to jump up and begin the race. It was raining gently, but Stefan was giving her a handicap, and soon, soon she would scramble off him and run away through lush green grass. She would make this a fair race and really put her muscle into it, but Stefan, of course, would catch her. Then they would go down on the grass together, laughing and laughing as if they were having hysterics.

As for the vague, far-off sounds of wolflike leers and drunken snarls, even they were gradually changing. It all had to do with some silly dream about Damon and an ash rod. In the dream, Damon was swinging hard enough to satisfy the most exacting of onlookers, and the blows, which Elena could hear in the increasing silence, sounded more than hard enough, and made her feel a bit nauseated when she reflected that they were the sound of her own skin splitting, but she felt no more than dull cuffs up and down her back. And Stefan was drawing up her hand to kiss!

"I'll always be yours," Stefan said. "We belong together every time you dream."

I'll always be yours, Elena told him silently, knowing he would get the message. I may not be able to dream of you all the time, but I am always with you.

Always, my angel. I'm waiting for you, Stefan said.

Elena heard her own voice say "Ten," and Stefan kissed her hand again and was gone. Blinking, bewildered, and confused by the sudden inrush of noises, she sat cautiously up, looking around.

Young Drohzne was hunched into himself, blind with fury, disappointment, and more liquor than even he could stand up under. The wailing women had long ago gone silent, awed. The children were the only ones who still made any noise, climbing up and down on the boards, whispering to one another and running if Elena should happen to glance their way.

And then, with an entire lack of ceremony, it was over.

When Elena first stood up the world made a complete double circle around her and her legs folded. Damon caught her, and called to the few young men still conscious and inclined to look at him, "Give me a cape." It wasn't a request, and the best-dressed of the men, who seemed to have been slumming, tossed him a heavy cape, black, lined with greenish blue, and said, "Keep it. The performance - marvelous. Is it a hypnotist's act?"

"No performance," Damon snarled, in a voice that stopped the other slummers in the act of holding out business cards.

"Take them," Elena whispered.

Damon snatched up the cards in one hand, ungraciously. But Elena forced herself to toss the hair off her face and smile slowly, heavy-lidded, at the young men. They smiled somewhat timidly back.

"When you - ah - perform again..."

"You'll hear," Elena called to them. Damon was already carrying her back to Dr. Meggar, surrounded by the inevitable entourage of children plucking at their cloaks. It was only then that it occurred to Elena to wonder why Damon had asked for a cloak from some strangers, when he, in fact, was already wearing one.

"They will be having ceremonies somewhere, now that there are this many of them," Mrs. Flowers said in genteel distress as she and Matt sat and sipped herbal tea in the boardinghouse parlour. It was dinnertime, but still quite light outside.

"Ceremonies to do what?" Matt asked. He had never made it to his parents' house since he'd left Damon and Elena more than a week ago to come back to Fell's Church. He'd stopped by Meredith's house, which was on the edge of town, and she'd convinced him to come by Mrs. Flowers's first. After the conversation the three of them had had with Bonnie, Matt had decided it was best to be "invisible." His family would be safer if no one knew that he was still in Fell's Church. He would live at the boardinghouse, but none of the children who were making all the trouble would realize that. Then, with Bonnie and Meredith safely gone to meet Damon and Elena, Matt could be a sort of secret operative.

Now he almost wished he'd gone with the girls. Trying to be a secret operative in a place where all the enemies seemed to be able to hear and see better than you could, as well as to move much faster, hadn't turned out to be nearly as helpful as it had sounded. He spent reading most of the time the Internet blogs that Meredith had marked, looking for clues that might do them some good.

But he hadn't read of the need for any kind of ceremonies. He turned to Mrs. Flowers as she thoughtfully sipped her tea.

"Ceremonies for what?" he repeated.

With her soft white hair and her gentle face and vague, amiable blue eyes, Mrs. Flowers looked like the most harmless little old lady in the world. She wasn't. A witch by birth, and a gardener by vocation, she knew as much about black magic herbal toxins as about white magic healing poultices.

"Oh, doing generally unpleasant things," she replied sadly, staring into the tea leaves in her cup. "They're partly like pep rallies, you know, to get everyone all worked up. They probably also do some small black magic there. Some of it is by way of blackmail and brainwashing - they can tell any new converts that they are guilty now by reason of attending the meetings. They might as well give in and become fully initiated...that sort of thing. Very unpleasant."

"But what kind of unpleasant?" Matt persisted.

"I really don't know, dear. I never went to one of them."

Matt considered. It was almost 7:00, which was curfew for children under eighteen. Eighteen seemed to be the oldest that a child could be and become possessed.

Of course, it wasn't an official curfew. The sheriff's department seemed to have no idea of how to deal with the curious disease that was working its way through the young girls of Fell's Church. Scare them straight? It was the police that were frightened. One young sheriff had come tearing out of the Ryan house to be sick after seeing how Karen Ryan had bitten off the heads of her pet mice and what she had done with the rest of them.

Lock them away? The parents wouldn't hear of it, no matter how bad their child's behavior was, how obvious it was that their kid needed help. Children who were towed off to the next town for an appointment with a psychiatrist sat demurely and spoke calmly and logically...for the entire fifty minutes of their appointment. Then, on their way back they took revenge, repeating everything their parents said in perfect mimicry, making startlingly real-sounding animal noises, holding conversations with themselves in Asian-sounding languages, or even resorting to the clich�� but still chilling backward-talking routine.

Neither ordinary discipline nor ordinary medical science seemed to have an answer to the childrens' problem.

But what frightened parents the most was when their sons and daughters would disappear. Early on, it was assumed that the children went to the cemetery, but when adults tried to follow them to one of their secret meetings, they found the cemetery empty - even down to Honoria Fell's secret crypt. The children seemed to have simply...vanished.

Matt thought he knew the answer to this conundrum. That thicket of the Old Wood still standing near the cemetery. Either Elena's powers of purification had not reached this far, or the place was so malevolent that it had been able to resist her cleansing.

And, as Matt knew well, the Old Woods were completely under the domination of the kitsune by now. You could take two steps into the thicket and spend the rest of your life trying to get out.

"But maybe I'm young enough to follow them in," he said now to Mrs. Flowers. "I know Tom Pierler goes with them and he's my age. And then so were the ones who started it: Caroline gave it to Jim Bryce, who gave it to Isobel Saitou."

Mrs. Flowers looked abstracted. "We should ask Isobel's grandmother for more of those Shinto wards against evil she blessed," she said. "Do you think you could do that sometime, Matt? Soon we'll have to ready ourselves for a barricade, I'm afraid."

"Is that what the tea leaves say?"

"Yes, dear, and they agree with what my poor old head says, too. You might want to pass the word on to Dr. Alpert as well so she can get her daughter and grandchildren out of town before it's too late."

"I'll give her the message, but I think it's going to be pretty hard tearing Tyrone away from Deborah Koll. He's really stuck on her - hey, maybe Dr. Alpert can get the Kolls to leave, too."

"Maybe she can. That would mean a few less children to worry about," Mrs. Flowers said, taking Matt's cup to peer into it.

"I'll do it." It was weird, Matt thought. He had three allies now in Fell's Church and they were all women over sixty. One was Mrs. Flowers, still vigorous enough to be up every morning taking a walk and doing her gardening; one was Obaasan - confined to bed, tiny and doll-like, with her black hair held up in a bun - who was always ready with advice from the years she had spent as a shrine maiden; and the last was Dr. Alpert, Fell's Church's local doctor, who had iron gray hair, burnished dark brown skin, and an absolutely pragmatic attitude about everything, including magic. Unlike the police, she refused to deny what was happening in front of her, and did her best to help alleviate the fears of the children as well as to advise the terrified parents.

A witch, a priestess, and a doctor. Matt figured that he had all his bases covered, especially since he also knew Caroline, the original patient in this case - whether it was possession by foxes or wolves or both, plus something else.

"I'll go to the meeting tonight," he said firmly. "The kids have been whispering and contacting each other all day. I'll hide in the afternoon someplace where I can see them going into the thicket. Then I'll follow - as long as Caroline or - God help us, Shinichi or Misao - isn't with them."

Mrs. Flowers poured him another cup of tea. "I'm very worried about you, Matt, dear. It seems to me to be a day of bad omens. Not the sort of day to take chances."

"Does your mom have anything to say about it?" Matt asked, genuinely interested. Mrs. Flowers's mother had died sometime around the beginning of the 1900s, but that hadn't stopped her from communicating with her daughter.

"Well, that's just the thing. I haven't heard a word from her all day. I'll just try one more time." Mrs. Flowers shut her eyes, and Matt could see her crepe-textured eyelids move around as she presumably looked for her mother or tried to go into a trance or something. Matt drank his tea and finally began to play a game on his mobile.

At last Mrs. Flowers opened her eyes again and sighed. "Dear Mama (she always said it that way, with the accent on the second syllable) is being fractious today. I just can't get her to give me a clear answer. She does say that the meeting will be very noisy, and then very silent. And it's clear that she feels it will be very dangerous as well. I think I'd better go with you, my dear."

"No, no! If your mother thinks it's that dangerous I won't even try it," Matt said. The girls would skin him alive if anything happened to Mrs. Flowers, he thought. Better to play it safe.

Mrs. Flowers sat back in her chair, seeming relieved. "Well," she said at last, "I suppose I'd better get to my weeding. I have mugwort to cut and dry, too. And blueberries should be ripe by now, as well. How time flies."

"Well, you're cooking for me and all," Matt said. "I wish you'd let me pay you bed and board."

"I could never forgive myself! You are my guest, Matt. As well as my friend, I do so hope."

"Absolutely. Without you, I'd be lost. And I'll just take a walk around the edge of town. I need to burn off some energy. I wish - " He broke off suddenly. He'd started to say he wished he could shoot a few hoops with Jim Bryce. But Jim wouldn't be shooting hoops again - ever. Not with his mutilated hands.

"I'll just go out and take a walk," he said.

"Yes," said Mrs. Flowers. "Please, Matt dear, be careful. Remember to take a jacket or Windbreaker."

"Yes, ma'am." It was early August, hot and humid enough to walk around in swimming briefs. But Matt had been raised to treat little old ladies in a certain way - even if they were witches and in most things sharp as the X-acto knife he slipped into his pocket as he left the boardinghouse.

He went outside, then, by a side route, down to the cemetery.

Now, if he just went over there, where the ground dipped down below the thicket, he'd have a good view of anyone going into the last remnant of the Old Wood while no one on the path below could see him from any angle.

He hurried toward his chosen hide noiselessly, ducking behind tombstones, keeping alert for any change in birdsong, which would indicate that the children were coming. But the only birdsong was the raucous shriek of crows in the thicket and he saw no one at all -

- until he slipped into his hideout.

Then he found himself face-to-face with a drawn gun, and, behind that, the face of Sheriff Rich Mossberg.

The first words out of the officer's mouth seemed to come entirely by rote, as if someone had pulled a string on a twentieth-century talking doll.

"Matthew Jeffrey Honeycutt, I hereby arrest you for assault and battery upon Caroline Beula Forbes. You have the right to remain silent - "

"And so do you," Matt hissed. "But not for long! Hear those crows all taking off at once? The kids are coming to the Old Wood! And they're close!"

Sheriff Mossberg was one of those people who never stop speaking until they are finished, so by this time he was saying: "Do you understand these rights?"

"No, sir! Mi ne komprenas Dumbtalk!"

A wrinkle appeared between the sheriff's eyebrows. "Is that Italian lingo you're trying on me?"

"It's Esperanto - we don't have time! There they are - and, oh, God, Shinichi's with them!" The last sentence was spoken in the barest of whispers as Matt lowered his head, peeking through the tall weeds at the edge of the cemetery without stirring them.

Yes, it was Shinichi, hand in hand with a little girl of maybe twelve. Matt recognized her vaguely: she lived up near Ridgemont. Now, what was her name? Betsy, Becca...?

There was a faint anguished sound from Sheriff Mossberg. "My niece," he breathed, surprising Matt that he could speak so softly. "That, in fact, is my niece, Rebecca!"

"Okay, just stay still and hang on," Matt whispered. There was a line of children following behind Shinichi just as if he were some sort of Satanic Pied Piper, with his red-tipped black hair shining and his golden eyes laughing in the late-afternoon sunlight. The children were giggling and singing, some of them in sweet nursery school voices, a remarkably twisted version of "Seven Little Rabbits." Matt felt his mouth go dry. It was agony to watch them march into the forest thicket, like watching lambs riding up a ramp into an abattoir.

He had to commend the sheriff for not trying to shoot Shinichi. That would really have caused all hell to break loose. But then, just as Matt's head was sagging in relief as the last of the children entered the thicket, he jerked it back up again.

Sheriff Mossberg was preparing to get up.

"No!" Matt grabbed his wrist.

The sheriff pulled away. "I have to go in there! He's got my niece!"

"He won't kill her. They don't kill the children. I don't know why, but they don't."

"You heard what sort of filth he was teaching them. He'll sing a different tune when he sees a semiautomatic Glock pistol aimed at his head."

"Listen," Matt said, "you've got to arrest me, right? I demand that you arrest me. But don't go into that Wood!"

"I don't see any proper Wood," the sheriff said with disdain. "There's barely room in that stand of oak trees for all those kids to sit down. If you want to be of some use in your life, you can grab one or two of the little ones as they come running out."

"Running out?"

"When they see me, they're going to scatter. Probably burst out in all directions, but some of 'em will take the path they used to go in. Now are you going to help or not?"

"Not, sir," Matt said slowly and firmly. "And - and, look - look, I'm begging you not to go in there! Believe me, I know what I'm talking about!"

"I don't know what kind of dope you're on, kid, but in fact I don't have time to talk any more right now. And if you try to stop me again" - he swung the Glock to cover Matt - "I'll cite you for another account of trying to obstruct justice. Get it?"

"Yeah, I get it," Matt said, feeling tired. He slumped back into the hide as the officer, making surprisingly little noise, slipped out and made his way down to the thicket. Then Sheriff Rich Mossberg strode in between the trees and was lost to Matt's field of vision.

Matt sat in the hide and sweated for an hour. He was having trouble staying awake when there was a disturbance in the thicket and Shinichi came out, leading the laughing, singing children.

Sheriff Mossberg didn't come out with them.
23#
发表于 2016-9-21 22:14 | 只看该作者
Chapter 22

The afternoon after Elena's "discipline," Damon took out a room in the same complex where Dr. Meggar lived. Lady Ulma stayed in the doctor's office until between them, Sage, Damon, and Dr. Meggar had healed her completely.

She never talked about sad things now. She told them so many stories about her childhood estate that they felt they could walk around it and recognize every room, vast though it was.

"I suppose it's home to rats and mice now," she said wistfully at the conclusion of one story. "And spiders and moths."

"But why?" Bonnie said, failing to see the signals that both Meredith and Elena were giving her not to ask.

Lady Ulma tipped her head back to look at the ceiling. "Because...of General Verantz. The middle-aged demon who saw me when I was only fourteen. When he had the army attack my home, they slaughtered every living thing they found inside - except me and my canary. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles...my younger brothers and sisters. Even my cat sleeping on the window seat. General Verantz had me brought in front of him, just as I was, in my nightgown and bare feet, with my hair unbrushed and coming out of its braid, and beside him was my canary with the nighttime cloth off its cage. It was still alive and hopping about as cheerful as ever. And that made everything else that happened seem worse somehow - and yet more like a dream, too. It's difficult to explain.

"Two of the general's men were holding me when they brought me before him. They were really propping me up more than keeping me from running, though. I was so young, you see, and everything kept fading in and out. But I remember exactly what the general said to me. He said, 'I told this bird to sing and it sang. I told your parents I wanted to give you the honor of being my wife and they refused. Now look over there. Will you be like the canary or your parents, I wonder?' And he pointed to a dim corner of the room - of course it was all torchlight then, and the torches had been put out for the night. But there was enough light for me to see that there was a heap of round objects, with thatch or grass at one side of them. At least that is what I first thought - truly. I was that innocent, and I believe shock had done something to my mind."

"Please," Elena said, stroking Lady Ulma's hand gently. "You don't have to keep on with this. We understand - "

But Lady Ulma didn't seem to hear the words. She said, "And then one of the general's men held up a sort of coconut with very long thatch at the top, braided. He swung it casually - and all of a sudden I saw it for what it really was. It was my mother's head."

Elena choked involuntarily. Lady Ulma looked around at the three girls with steady, dry eyes. "I suppose you think me very callous for being able to talk about such things without breaking down."

"No, no - " Elena began hastily. She herself was shaking, even after tuning down her psychic senses to their least extent. She hoped Bonnie wouldn't faint.

Lady Ulma was speaking again. "War, casual violence, and tyranny are all I have known since my childhood innocence was crushed in that moment. It is kindness now that astounds me, that makes my eyes sting with tears."

"Oh, don't cry," begged Bonnie, throwing her arms around the woman impulsively. "Please don't. We're here for you."

Meanwhile Elena and Meredith were regarding each other with knitted eyebrows and quick shrugs.

"Yes, please don't cry," Elena put in, feeling faintly guilty, but determined to try Plan A. "But tell us, why did your family estate end up in such bad condition?"

"It was the fault of the general. He was sent to faraway lands to fight foolish, meaningless wars. When he left he would take most of his retinue with him - including slaves who were in favor at the moment. When he left once, three years after he had attacked our home, I was not in favor, and I was not chosen to be with him. I was lucky. His entire battalion was wiped out; the household members who went with him were taken captive or slaughtered. He had no heir and his property here reverted to the Crown, which had no use for it. It has lain unoccupied for all these many years - looted many times, no doubt, but with its true secret, the secret of the jewels, undiscovered...as far as I know."

"The Secret of the Jewels," Bonnie whispered, clearly putting it all in capital letters, as if it were a mystery novel. She still had an arm around Lady Ulma.

"What secret of the jewels?" Meredith said more calmly. Elena couldn't speak for the delicious shivers that were running through her. This was like being part of some magical play.

"In my parents' day, it was common to hide your wealth somewhere on your estate - and to keep the knowledge of its hiding place strictly to the owners. Of course, my father, as a designer and trader in jewels, had more to hide than most people knew of. He had a wonderful room that seemed to me something like Aladdin's cave. It was his workshop, where he kept his raw gems as well as finished pieces that had been commissioned or that he designed for my mother or out of his imagination."

"And no one ever found that?" Meredith said. There was just the slightest tinge of skepticism in her voice.

"If anyone did, I never heard about it. Of course, they could have gotten the knowledge out of my father or mother, in time - but the general was not a meticulous and patient vampire or kitsune, but a rough and impatient demon. He killed my parents as he stormed through the house. It never occurred to him that I, a child of fourteen, might share the knowledge."

"But you did..." Bonnie whispered, fascinated, taking the story where it had to go.

"But I did. And I do now."

Elena gulped. She was still trying to stay calm, to be more like Meredith, to maintain a cool head. But just as she opened her mouth to be coolheaded, Meredith said, "What are we waiting for?" and jumped to her feet.

Lady Ulma seemed to be the most tranquil person there. She also seemed slightly bewildered and almost timid. "You mean that we should ask our master for an audience?"

"I mean that we should go out there and get those jewels!" Elena exclaimed. "Although, yes, Damon would be a big asset if there's anything that takes strength to lift. Sage, too." She couldn't understand why Lady Ulma wasn't more excited.

"Don't you see?" Elena said, her mind racing. "You can have your household back again! We can do our best to fix it up the way it was when you were a child. I mean, if that's what you want to do with the money. But I'd love, at least, to see the Aladdin's cave!"

"But - well," Lady Ulma seemed suddenly distressed. "I had meant to ask Master Damon for another favor - although the money from the jewels might help with that."

"What is it that you want?" Elena said as gently as she could. "And you don't need to call him Master Damon. He freed you days ago, remember?"

"But surely that was just a - a celebration of the moment?" Lady Ulma still looked puzzled. "He didn't make it official at the Servile Offices or anything, did he?"

"If he didn't it's because he didn't know!" Bonnie cried out at the same time as Meredith said, "We don't really understand the protocol. Is that what you need to do?"

Lady Ulma seemed able only to nod her head. Elena felt humble. She guessed that this woman, a slave for more than twenty-two years, must find true freedom difficult to believe in.

"Damon meant it when he said we were all free," she said, kneeling by Lady Ulma's chair. "He just didn't know all the things he had to do. If you tell us, we can tell him, and then we can all go to your old estate."

She was about to get up again, when Bonnie said, "Something's wrong. She isn't as happy as she was before. We have to find out what it is."

By opening her psychic perceptions a bit, Elena could tell that Bonnie was right. She stayed where she was, kneeling by Lady Ulma's chair.

"What is it?" she said, because the woman seemed to bare her soul most when she, Elena, asked the questions.

"I had hoped," Lady Ulma said slowly, "that Master Damon might buy..." She flushed, but struggled on. "Might find it in his heart to buy one more slave. The...the father of my child."

There was a moment of perfect silence, and then all three girls were talking, all three, Elena guessed, trying frantically to do what she herself was working at, which was not mentioning that she had assumed Old Drohzne was the father.

But of course he couldn't be, Elena scolded herself. She's happy about this pregnancy - and who could be happy to have a child by a disgusting monster like Old Drohzne? Besides, he didn't have a clue that she might be pregnant - and didn't care.

"It might be easier said than done," Lady Ulma said, when the babble of reassurances and questions had died down a little. "Lucen is a jeweler, a renowned man who creates pieces that...that remind me of my father's. He will be expensive."

"But we've got Aladdin's cave to explore!" Bonnie said gleefully. "I mean, you'll have enough if you sell off the jewelry, right? Or do you need more?"

"But that is Master Damon's jewelry," Lady Ulma said, seeming horrified. "Even if he did not realize it when he inherited all of Old Drohzne's property, he became my owner, and the owner of all my property...."

"Let's go get you freed and then we'll take things one step at a time," Meredith said in her firmest and most rational voice.

Dear Diary,

Well, I am writing to you still as a slave. Today we freed Lady Ulma, but decided that Meredith and Bonnie and I should remain "personal assistants." This is because Lady Ulma said Damon would seem odd and unfashionable if he didn't have several beautiful girls as courtesans.

There is actually an upside to this, which is that as courtesans we need to have beautiful clothes and jewelry all the time. Since I've been wearing the same pair of jeans ever since that b*st*rd Old Drohzne sliced up the pair I wore into this place, you can imagine that I'm excited. But, truly, it's not just because of pretty clothes I'm excited. Everything that happened since we freed Lady Ulma and then went to her old estate has been a wonderful dream. The house was run down, and obviously the home of wild animals who used it as a lavatory as well as a bedroom. We even found the tracks of wolves and other animals upstairs, which led to the question of whether werewolves live in this world. Apparently they do, and some in very high positions under various feudal lords. Maybe Caroline would like to try a vacation here to learn about the real werewolves though - they're said to hate humans so much that they won't even have human or vampire (once human) slaves.

But back to Lady Ulma's house. Its foundation is of stone and it's paneled inside with hardwood, so the basic structure is fine. The curtains and tapestries are all hanging in shreds, of course, so it's sort of spooky to go inside with torches and see them dangling above and around you. Not to mention the giant spiderwebs. I hate spiders more than anything.

But we went inside, with our torches seeming like smaller versions of that giant crimson sun that always sits on the horizon, staining everything outside the color of blood, and we shut the doors and lit a fire in a giant fireplace in what Lady Ulma calls the Great Hall. (I think it's where you eat or have parties - it has an enormous table on a dais at one side, and a room for minstrels above what must be the dance floor. Lady Ulma said that this is where the servants all sleep at night, too (the Great Hall, not the minstrel gallery).

Then we went upstairs, where we saw - I swear - several dozen bedrooms with very large four-poster beds that are going to need new mattresses and sheets and coverlets and hangings, but we didn't stay to look around. There were bats hanging from the ceiling.

We headed for Lady Ulma's mother's workroom. It was a very large room where at least forty people could sit and sew the clothes that Lady Ulma's mother designed. But here's the exciting part!

Lady Ulma went to one of the wardrobes in the room and moved away all the tattered, moth-eaten clothes that were in it. And she pressed some different places at the back of the cupboard and the whole back of the cupboard slid out! Inside it was a very narrow stairway going straight down!

I kept thinking about Honoria Fell's crypt and wondering if some homeless vampire might have taken up residence in the room downstairs, but I knew that was silly because there were spiderwebs just inside the door. Damon still insisted that he go down first because he has the best eyesight in the dark, but I think the truth is that he was just curious to see what was down there.

We each followed him one at a time, trying to be careful with the torches, and...well, I can't find the right words for what we discovered. For just a few minutes I was disappointed because everything on the big table down there was dusty rather than sparkly, but then Lady Ulma began to gently brush jewels off with a special cloth and Bonnie found sacks and packages and she poured them out - and it was like pouring out a rainbow! Damon found a cabinet where there were drawers and drawers of necklaces, bracelets, rings, armlets, anklets, earrings, nose rings, and hairpins and ornaments, too!

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I poured out a pouch and found that I had a huge handful of glorious white diamonds dripping through my fingers, some of them as big as my thumbnail. I saw white pearls and black pearls, both smaller and perfectly matched, and huge and in marvelous shapes: almost as big as apricots with pink or golden or gray sheens to them. I saw sapphires the size of quarters, with stars you could see almost from across the room. I held handfuls of emeralds and peridots and opals and rubies and tourmalines and amethysts - and a lot of lapis lazuli, for the discriminating vampire, of course.

And the jewelry that was already made up was so beautiful it made my throat ache. I know Lady Ulma had a quiet little cry, but I think it was partly from happiness as we all kept complimenting her on her jewels. In days she has gone from being a slave who owned nothing to an incredibly rich woman who owns a house and all the means she would ever need to keep it up in style. We decided that even though she is going to marry her lover, it was best at first for Damon to buy him quietly and free him quietly, but to play "Head of the Household" for as long as we are here. During that time we will treat Lady Ulma as family, and will put the jeweler Lucen back to work until we leave, when he and Lady Ulma can quietly take Damon's place. The feudal lords around here are not demons anymore, but vampires, and they have less objection to humans owning property.

Have I told you about Lucen? He's a wonderful artist with jewels! He has a burning need to create - in his early days as a slave he would create with mud and weeds, imagining that he was making jewelry. Then he got lucky and was apprenticed to a jeweler. He's felt sorry for Lady Ulma for so long, and loved her for so long, that it's like a little miracle that they are truly able to get together - and most importantly, as free citizens.

We were afraid that Lucen might not like the idea of us buying him as a slave and not freeing him until we leave, but he never thought he'd be free - because of his talent. He's a slow, gentle, kind man, with a neat little beard and gray eyes that remind me of Meredith's. And he's so amazed at being treated decently and not worked around the clock that he would have accepted anything, just to be allowed to be near Lady Ulma. I guess he was an apprentice when her father was a jeweler, and he fell in love with her all those years ago, but he thought he would never, never ever be able to be with her, because she was a young lady of quality and he was a slave. They're so happy together!

Every day Lady Ulma looks more beautiful, and younger. She asked permission from Damon to dye her hair all black, and he told her she could dye it pink if she liked, and now she just looks incredibly beautiful. I can't believe I ever thought of her as an old hag, but that's what agony and fear and hopelessness do to you. Every one of those gray hairs was from being a slave, with no property, no say in her future, no safety, no ability even to keep her children, if she had them.

I forgot to tell you the other upside of Meredith, Bonnie, and I being "personal assistants" for a while. It's that we can employ a lot of poor women who make their living by sewing, and Lady Ulma actually wants to design and show them how to make our finest clothes. We told her that she could just relax, but she says all her life she's fantasized about being a designer like her mother and now she's dying to do it - with three completely different types of girl to dress. I'm dying to see what she'll come up with: she's already started sketching and tomorrow the man who sells fabric will come and she'll pick the materials.

Meanwhile Damon has hired about two hundred people (really!) to clean out Lady Ulma's estate, put up new wall hangings and curtains, refurbish the plumbing system, polish up the furniture that has kept nicely, and to get new furniture where things have fallen apart. Oh, and to plant ready-grown flowers and trees in the gardens and put in fountains and all kinds of stuff. With that many people working, we ought to be able to move in in just a matter of days.

All this has just one purpose, aside from making Lady Ulma happy. It's so that Damon and his "personal assistants" will be accepted by high society as the season of parties begins this year. Because I've kept the best for last. Both Lady Ulma and Sage could immediately identify the people in the riddles that Misao gave to us!

It just goes to prove what I thought before, that Misao never imagined that we'd actually make it here, or that we could get entrance to the places where they've hidden the two halves of the fox key.

But there's a very easy way to get invited into the houses we need to get into. If we're the newest, splashiest nouveau riche (sp?) around, and if we circulate the story that Lady Ulma has been restored to her rightful place, and if everyone wants to know about her - we'll get invited to parties! And that's how we get into the two estates we need to visit to look for the halves of the key that we need to free Stefan! And we're incredibly lucky, because this is the time of year when everyone begins to give parties, and both households we want to visit are having early celebrations: one is a gala, and one is a spring soiree to celebrate the first flowers.

I know my writing is shaky now. I'm shaky myself at the thought that we are actually going to look for the two halves of the fox key that will let us break Stefan out of his prison.

Oh, diary, it's late - and I can't - I can't write about Stefan. To be here in the same city with him, to know the direction to his prison...and yet to not be able to get to see him. My eyes are so blurred I can't see what I'm writing. I wanted to get some sleep to be ready for another day of running around, supervising, and watching Lady Ulma's estate blossom like a rose - but now I'm afraid I'll just have nightmares about Stefan's hand slowly slipping out of mine.
24#
发表于 2016-9-21 22:16 | 只看该作者
Chapter 23

That "night" they moved in, choosing the hour while the other estates they passed were darkened and quiet. Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie each picked a room on the upper floor as a bedroom, all close together. Nearby was a luxurious bathing room, with a pale blue and white marble floor and a unique pool shaped like a giant rose, fully large enough to swim in, heated by charcoal, with a cheerful-looking servant to tend it.

Elena was delighted with what happened next. Damon bought a number of slaves quietly, in a private sale from a respectable dealer, and then promptly freed them all and offered them wages and time off. Almost all the former slaves were only too happy to agree to stay, and only a few chose to leave or ran away, mostly women in search of their families. The others would remain and become Lady Ulma's staff once Damon, Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith left after freeing Stefan.

Lady Ulma, was given a "senior" room downstairs, although Damon almost had to use brute force to install her in it. He himself chose a room that was an office by day, since he wasn't likely to spend much of the night in the house anyway.

There was a slight embarrassment over that. Most of the staff knew of the ways of vampire masters, and the young girls and women who came to sew or who lived on the estate and cooked and cleaned seemed to expect some sort of rota to be worked out, with each of them taking turns at being donors.

Damon explained this to Elena, who quashed the idea before it could be implemented. She could tell that Damon was hoping for a steady stream of girls, ranging from flowerlike to red-cheeked and buxom, who would be glad to be "tapped" like beer kegs for the pretty bangles and baubles that were traditionally given.

Elena similarly disposed of the idea of hunting for hire. Sage had mentioned that there were even rumors of a possible Outside connection: a very advanced training course for Navy SEALs.

"And they can come out the world's only vampire seals," Elena had said sardonically, in front of a group of male slaves this time. "They can go out and bite sharks. Certainly you guys can go out and hunt some humans like a pair of owls hunting mice - just don't bother to come home afterward, because the doors will be locked...permanently." She held Sage's gaze until her expression became a steely glare and he'd hastened off to do something else around the estate.

Elena didn't mind Sage's informal moving in with them. And after hearing how Sage had saved Damon from the mob that ambushed him on the way to the Meeting Place, she had determined in her own mind that if Sage ever wanted her blood, she would give it to him unhesitatingly. After a few days, when he had stayed around the house near Dr. Meggar's and then moved with them into Lady Ulma's compound, she had wondered if her diminished aura and Damon's reticence weren't depriving him of something he should know about. So she'd thrown broader and broader hints at him, until once when he had doubled over, and then, with tears of laughter (but had it only been laughter?) in his eyes, had come over to her and said that the Americans had a saying, no? You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. In his case, he said, you could lead a snarling black panther - her normal mental iconic image of Damon - to water, if you had electric cattle prods and elephant ankusha, but that afterward you'd be a fool to turn your back on it. Elena had laughed until she, too, cried, but had still pledged that if he wanted her blood, a reasonable share was his.

Now she simply felt glad to have him around. Her heart was too full already, with Stefan, Damon - and even Matt, despite his apparent desertion - for her to be in danger of falling for another vampire, no matter how terminally fit they were. She appreciated Sage as a friend and protector.

Elena was surprised at how much she came to rely on Lakshmi as each day passed. Lakshmi had begun as a sort of gopher, doing the running around that no one else wanted to, but more and more, she had become Lady Ulma's maid-in-waiting and Elena's source of information about this world. Lady Ulma was still officially bedridden, and having Lakshmi ready at any time of the day or night, to send messages, was wonderfully convenient. Too, she was someone that Elena could ask questions of that otherwise would get her eyed as if she were crazy. Did they need to buy plates or was food served on a large hunk of dried bread, which acted as a napkin for greasy fingers as well? (Plates had been recently introduced, along with forks, which were all the rage now.) How much were the men and woman of the household entitled to in wages (which had to be calculated from scratch, since no other household paid its slaves a geld, merely clothing them from a community uniform cache, and allowing them one or two "feast days" a year)? Young as she was, Lakshmi was both honest and bold and Elena was grooming her to become Lady Ulma's right hand, after Lady Ulma had become well enough to be the lady of the house.
25#
发表于 2016-9-21 22:18 | 只看该作者
Chapter 24

Dear Diary,

It's the night before the night of our first party - or rather gala. But I don't feel very gala. I miss Stefan too much.

I've been brooding about Matt, too. How he walked away, so angry at me, not even looking back. He didn't understand how I could...care for...Damon, and yet still love Stefan so much that it felt as if my heart was breaking.

Elena put down the pen and stared at her diary dully. The heartbreak manifested itself in actual physical pains in her chest that would have frightened her if she hadn't been sure of what it really was. She missed Stefan so desperately that she could hardly eat, could barely sleep. He was like a part of her mind that was constantly on fire, like a phantom limb that would never go away.

Not even writing in her diary would help tonight. All she could write about were painfully tantalizing memories of the good times she and Stefan had shared together. How good it had been when she could just turn her head and know that she would see him - what a privilege that had been! And now it was gone, and in its place was racking confusion, guilt, and anxiety. What was happening to him, right now, when she no longer had the privilege of turning her head and seeing him? Were they...hurting him?

Oh, God, if only...

If only I had made him lock all the windows to his room at the boardinghouse...

If only I had been more suspicious of Damon...

If only I had guessed he had something on his mind that last night...

If only...if only...

It became a pounding refrain in time to her heart. She found herself breathing in sobs, her eyes tightly shut, clutching the rhythm to her and clenching her fists.

If I keep feeling this way - if I let it crush me enough - I'll become an infinitesimal point in space. I'll be crushed into nothingness - and even that will be better than needing him so much.

Elena lifted up her head...and stared down at her head, resting on her diary.

She gasped.

Once more her first reaction was to imagine death. And then, slowly, because she was stupefied by so many tears, she realized that she'd done it again.

She was out of her body.

This time she wasn't even aware of a conscious decision about where to go. She was flying, so fast that she couldn't tell which way she was going. It was as if she were being pulled, as if she were the tail of a comet that was rapidly shooting downward.

At one point she realized with familiar horror that she was passing through things, and then she was veering as if she were the end of the whip in a game of Crack the Whip and then she was catapulted into Stefan's cell.

She was still sobbing as she landed in the cell, unsure of whether she had solid form or gravity, and uncaring for the moment. The only thing she had time to see was Stefan, very thin but smiling in his sleep and then she was dumped onto him, into him, and still crying as she bounced, as lightly as a feather, and Stefan woke.

"Oh, can't you let me sleep for a few minutes in peace?" Stefan snapped, and added a couple of Italian words that Elena had never had reason to hear before.

Elena had an immediate fit of the Bonnies, sobbing so hard that she couldn't listen to - couldn't even hear - any comfort that was on offer. They were doing horrible things to him, and they were using her image, Elena's, to do them. It was all too awful. They were conditioning Stefan to hate her. She hated herself. Everyone in the whole world hated her -

"Elena! Elena, don't cry, love!"

Dully, Elena lifted herself up, getting a brief anatomical view of Stefan's chest before she was sobbing again, trying to wipe her nose on Stefan's prison uniform, which looked as if it could only be improved by anything she might do to it.

She couldn't, of course; just as she couldn't feel the arm that was trying to encircle her gently. She hadn't brought her body with her.

But she had, somehow, brought her tears, and a cold, cable-wire-tough voice inside herself said, Don't waste them, idiot! Use those tears. If you're going to sob, sob over his face or his hands. And, by the way, everyone hates you.

Even Matt hates you, and Matt likes everybody, the tiny cruel, productive voice went on and Elena gave way to a fresh gale of sobbing, absently noting the effect of each teardrop. Each drop turned the white skin under it pink and the color spread in ripples outward, as if Stefan were a pool, and she was resting on him, water on water.

Except that her tears were falling so fast that it looked like a rainstorm on Wickery Pond. And that only made her think about the time that Matt had fallen into the pond, trying to rescue a little girl who had fallen through the ice, and how Matt hated her now.

"Don't, oh don't; don't, lovely love," Stefan begged, so sincerely that anyone would have believed he meant it. But how could he? Elena knew what she must look like, face swollen and blotched by tears: no "lovely love" here! And he'd have to be mad to want her to stop crying: the teardrops were giving him new life wherever they touched his skin - and perhaps the storm inside him had done best, because his telepathic voice was strong and sure.

Elena, forgive me - oh, God, just give me one moment with her! Just a single moment! I can bear anything then, even the true death. Just one moment to touch her!

And perhaps God did look down for a moment in pity. Elena's lips were hovering over, quivering over, Stefan's, as if she could somehow steal a kiss like this as she used to when he was still asleep. But for just an instant it seemed to Elena that she felt warm flesh below hers and the flick of Stefan's lashes against her eyelids as his eyes flew open in surprise.

Instantly they both froze, eyes wide open, neither of them foolish enough to move in the slightest. But Elena couldn't help herself, as the flush of warmth from Stefan's lips sent a flush of warmth through her entire body. She melted into the kiss, and, while keeping her body carefully in the same position, felt her gaze go unfocused and her eyelids close.

As her lashes swept against something with substance, the moment swept quietly to an end. Elena had two choices: she could shriek and rail telepathically at Il Signore for only giving them what Stefan had asked for, or she could gather her courage and smile and maybe comfort Stefan.

Her better nature won out and when Stefan opened his eyes, she was leaning over him, pretending to be resting on her elbows and his chest, and smiling at him as she tried to straighten out her hair.

Relieved, Stefan smiled back at her. It was as if he could bear anything, as long as she was unhurt.

"Now, Damon would have been practical," she teased him. "He would have kept me crying, because in the end, his health would be the most important thing. And he'd have prayed for..." She paused and finally began laughing, which made Stefan smile. "I have no idea," Elena said finally. "I don't think Damon prays."

"Probably not," Stefan said. "When we were young - and human - the town priest walked with a cane that he seemed to enjoy using on young delinquent boys more than as a source of support."

Elena thought of the delicate child chained to the huge and heavy boulder of secrets. Was religion one of the things locked away, put behind doors closed one after another in secret there, like a chambered nautilus until almost everything he cared about was inside?

She didn't ask that of Stefan. Instead, she said, lowering her "voice" to the tiniest telepathic whisper, the barest disturbance of neurons in Stefan's receptive brain: What other practical things can you think of that Damon might have thought of? Things relating to a jailbreak?

"Well...for a jailbreak? The first thing I can think of is for you to know your way around the city. I was brought here blindfolded but since they don't have the power to take the curse off vampires and make them human, I still had all my senses. I'd say it's a city about the size of New York and Los Angeles combined."

"Big city," Elena noted, taking notes in her head.

"But fortunately the only bits that would interest us are in the southwestern section. The city's supposed to be ruled by the Guardians - but they're from the Other Side and the demons and vampires here long ago realized that people were more afraid of them than the Guardians. It's set up now with about twelve to fifteen feudal castles or estates, and each of those estates has control of a considerable amount of land outside the city. They grow their own unique products and sell them in deals made here. For instance, it's the vampires who cultivate Clarion Loess Black Magic."

"I see," said Elena, who had no idea what he was talking about, except the Black Magic wine. "But all we really need to know is how to get to the Shi no Shi - your prison."

"That's true. Well, the easiest way would be to find the kitsune sector. The Shi no Shi is a cluster of buildings, with the largest one - the one without a top, although it's curved, and you may not be able to tell from the ground - "

"The one that looks like a coliseum?" Elena interrupted eagerly. "I get a sort of bird's-eye view of the city whenever I come here."

"Well, the thing that looks like a coliseum is a coliseum." Stefan smiled.

He really smiled; he's feeling well enough to smile, now, Elena rejoiced, but silently.

"So to get you in and out, we just head from below the coliseum to the gate back to our world," Elena said. "But to get you free there are - some things we need to collect - and those are probably going to be in different parts of the city." She tried to remember if she had ever described the twin fox key to Stefan or not. It was probably better not to do it if she hadn't already done it.

"Then I'd hire a native guide," Stefan said immediately. "I don't really know anything about the city, except what the guards tell me - and I'm not sure if I would trust them. But the little people - the ordinary ones - will probably know the things you want to know."

"That's a good idea," Elena said. She drew invisible designs with a transparent finger on his chest. "I think Damon really plans to do everything he can to help us."

"I honor him for coming," Stefan said, as if he were thinking things out. "He's keeping his promise, isn't he?"

Elena nodded. Deep, deep in her consciousness floated the thoughts: His word to me that he would take care of you. His word to you that he would take care of me. Damon always keeps his word.

"Stefan," she said, again in the innermost recesses of his mind, where she could share information - she hoped - in secret, "you should have seen him, really. When I did Wings of Redemption and every bad thing that had hardened him or made him cruel came undone. And when I did Wings of Purification and all the stone covering his soul came away in chunks.... I don't think you could imagine how he was. He was so perfect - and so new. And later when he cried..."

Elena could feel inside Stefan three layers of emotion succeed one another almost instantaneously. Disbelief that Damon could cry, despite all that Elena had been telling him. Then, belief and astonishment as he absorbed her pictures and her memories. And finally, the need to console her as she stared at a Damon forever trapped in penitence. A Damon that would never exist again.

"He saved you," whispered Elena, "but he wouldn't save himself. He wouldn't even bargain with Shinichi and Misao. He just let them take all his memories of that time."

"Maybe it hurt too much."

"Yes," said Elena, deliberately lowering her barriers so that Stefan could feel the hurt that the new and perfect creature she'd created had felt upon learning that he had committed acts of cruelty and treachery that - well, that would make the strongest soul flinch. "Stefan? I think he must feel very lonely."

"Yes, angel. I think you're right."

This time Elena thought a good deal longer before venturing, "Stefan? I'm not sure he understands what it's like to be loved." And while he thought out his response, she was on tenterhooks.

Then he said very softly, very slowly again, "Yes, angel. I think you're right."

Oh, she did love him. He always understood. And he was always most brave and gallant and trusting just when she needed him to be.

"Stefan? Can I stay again tonight?"

"Is it nighttime, lovely love? You can stay - unless They come to take me somewhere." All at once Stefan was very solemn, holding her gaze. "But if They come - you'll promise me to leave then, won't you?"

Elena looked straight into his green eyes and said, "If that's what you want, I'll promise."

"Elena? Do you...do you keep your promises or not?" Suddenly, he sounded very sleepy, but the right kind of sleepy, not worn out, but someone who has been refreshed and is being lulled into a perfect slumber.

"I keep them close to me," Elena whispered. But I keep you closer, she thought. If someone came to hurt him, they would find out what a bodiless opponent could do. For instance, what if she just reached inside their bodies and managed to make contact for an instant? Long enough to squeeze a heart between her pretty white fingers? That would be something.

"I love you, Elena. I'm so glad...we kissed..."

"It's not the last time! You'll see! I swear it!" She dropped new healing tears down on him.

Stefan just smiled gently. And then he was asleep.

In the morning Elena woke up in her grand bedroom in Lady Ulma's house, alone. But she had another memory, like a pressed rose, to put away in its own special place inside her.

And somewhere, deep in her heart, she knew that these memories might be all she had of Stefan someday. She could imagine that these sweet-scented, fragile mementoes would be something to hold on to and cherish - if Stefan never came home.
26#
发表于 2016-9-21 22:20 | 只看该作者
Chapter 25

"Oh, I just want to take a little peek," Bonnie moaned, looking at the forbidden sketchbook, the one in which Lady Ulma had drawn their high couture outfits for the first party, the one that would be held tonight. Beside it, just within reach, were some sample squares from bolts of fabric in shimmering satin, rippling silk, transparent muslin, and soft, rich velvet.

"You'll get to try it on for the last fitting in an hour - this time with your eyes open!" Elena laughed. "But we can't forget that tonight isn't playtime. We'll have to dance some dances, of course - "

"Of course!" Bonnie repeated ecstatically.

"But our purpose there is to find the key. The first half of the double fox key. I just wish there was a star ball that showed the inside of tonight's house."

"Well, we all know pretty much about it; we can talk about it and try to imagine it," Meredith said.

Elena, who had been fiddling with the star ball from the other house, now put the slightly cloudy orb down and said, "All right. Let's brainstorm."

"May I storm, too?" a low, modulated voice asked from the doorway. The girls all turned, rising at the same time to greet a smiling Lady Ulma.

Before taking a chair, she gave Elena a particularly heartfelt hug and kiss on the cheek and Elena couldn't help herself from comparing the woman as they had seen her at Dr. Meggar's to the elegant lady she was now. Then, she had been hardly more than skin over bones, with the eyes of a timid wild creature under great strain, wearing a common housecoat, with men's bedroom slippers. Now, she reminded Elena of a Roman matron, with her face tranquil and beginning to fill out under a crown of glossy dark braids held back by jeweled combs. Her body was filling out, too, especially her belly, although she retained her natural grace as she took a seat on a velvet couch. She was wearing a saffron-colored gown of raw silk, with an underskirt of fringed and shimmering apricot.

"We're so excited about the fitting tonight," Elena said, with a nod toward the sketchbook.

"I am as excited as a child, myself," Lady Ulma admitted. "I only wish I could do for you a tenth of what you have done for me."

"You have already," Elena said. "And if we can find the fox keys - it will only be because you helped us so much. And that - I can't tell you how much that means to me," she finished almost in a whisper.

"But you never thought I could help you when you defied the law for a ravaged slave. You simply wanted to save me - and you have suffered much for it," Ulma responded quietly.

Elena shifted uncomfortably. The cut running down her face had left only a thin white scar along the cheekbone. Once - when she had first returned to Earth from the afterlife - she would have been able to wave the scar away with a simple wash of Power. But now, although she could channel her Power through her body, and use it to enhance her senses, she couldn't make it obey her will in any other way.

And once, she thought, imagining the Elena who had stood in Robert E. Lee High School's parking lot and drooled over a Porsche, she would have considered the marring of her face the greatest calamity of her life. But with all the accolades she had received, with Damon calling it her "white wound of honor," and her certainty that it would mean as little to Stefan as a scar on his cheekbone would mean to her, she had found she just couldn't take it very seriously.

I am not the same person I once was, she thought. And I'm glad.

"Never mind," she said, ignoring the pain down her leg that still throbbed at times. "Let's talk about the Silver Nightingale and her gala."

"Right," Meredith said. "What do we know about her? How did the clue go again, Elena?"

"Misao said, 'If I said that one of the halves was inside the silver nightingale's instrument, would that even give you an idea?' - or something like that," Elena repeated obediently. They all knew the words by heart but it was part of the ritual, every time they discussed it.

"And the 'Silver Nightingale' is the nickname for Lady Fazina Darley and everyone in the Dark Dimension knows it!" cried Bonnie, clapping her small hands in sheer delight.

"Indeed, that has long been her sobriquet, given to her when she first came here and began to sing and play on her harps strung with silver," Lady Ulma put in gravely.

"And harp strings need to be tuned, and they're tuned with keys," Bonnie continued excitedly.

"Yes." Meredith, in contrast, spoke slowly and thoughtfully. "But it's not a harp-tuning key we're looking for. They look like this." She put down on a table beside her an object made of smooth pale maple that looked like a very short T or, if held on its side, like a gracefully waving tree with one short horizontal branch. "I got that from one of the minstrels Damon hired."

Bonnie eyed the tuning key loftily. "It might be a harp-tuning key we're looking for," she insisted. "It might be used for both things, somehow."

"I don't see how," Meredith said doggedly. "Unless somehow they change shape when the two halves come together."

"Oh, my, yes," Lady Ulma said, as if Meredith had just made an obvious proposition. "If they are magical halves of a single key they will almost certainly change when the two halves come together."

"You see?" Bonnie said.

"But if they can be any sort of shape, then how the hell will we even know when we've found them?" Elena asked impatiently. All she cared about was finding what it took to save Stefan.

Lady Ulma fell silent, and Elena felt badly. She hated to use harsh language or even appear distressed in front of the woman who had lived a life of such subjection and horror since her early teens. Elena wanted Lady Ulma to feel safe, to be happy.

"Anyway," she said quickly, "we know one thing. It's in the Silver Nightingale's instrument. So whatever is inside Lady Fazina's harp, that has to be it."

"Oh, but - " Lady Ulma began, and then she stopped herself almost before the words were out.

"What is it?" Elena asked gently.

"Oh, nothing at all," Lady Ulma said hastily. "I mean, would you like to see your dresses now? This last fitting is really just to make sure every stitch is perfect."

"Oh, we'd love to!" Bonnie cried, at the same time making a dive for the sketchbook, while Meredith rung a bell pull that brought a servant hurrying in and hurrying away again to the sewing room.

"I only wish Master Damon and Lord Sage had agreed to let me create something for them to wear," Lady Ulma said mournfully to Elena.

"Oh, Sage is not going. And I'm sure Damon wouldn't have minded - as long as you designed him a black leather jacket, a black shirt, black jeans, and black boots all exactly like the ones he wears every day. He'd have been happy to wear it then."

Lady Ulma laughed. "I see. Well, there will be enough fantastical styles worn tonight that he may change his mind for the future. Now let's draw the curtains on the windows all around. This gala is to be indoors, with gaslight only, so colors will show true."

"I wondered why it said 'indoors' on the invitations," Bonnie said. "I thought maybe it was because of rain."

"It's because of the sun," Lady Ulma said soberly. "That hateful crimson light, changing every blue to purple, every yellow to brown. You see, no one would wear aqua or green to an outdoor soiree - no, not even you, with that strawberry hair that cries out for it."

"I get it. I can see how having that sun hanging there every day would really get you down after a while."

"I wonder if you can," murmured Lady Ulma, and then she added hastily, "While we wait shall I show you what I have created for your tall friend who doubts me?"

"Oh, please, yes!" Bonnie held out the sketchbook.

Lady Ulma thumbed through it until she came to a page that seemed to please her. She took up pens and coloring pencils like a child eager to play with beloved toys again. "Here it is," she said, using the colored pencils to add a line here and a curve there, but holding the book so that the three girls could see the design.

"Oh, my God!" cried Bonnie in genuine astonishment, and even Elena felt her eyes widening.

The girl in the sketch was definitely Meredith, with her hair half up and half down, but wearing a dress - such a dress! Black as ebony, strapless, it clung to the long slim figure perfectly sketched in the picture, emphasizing the curves, enhancing them on top by what Elena learned was called a "sweetheart" neckline: one that made Meredith's front look like a Valentine's Day heart. It kept close to the body all the way to the knees where it suddenly flared out again, dramatically wide. "A 'mermaid' dress," Lady Ulma explained, satisfied with her sketch at last. "And here it is," she added as several sewing women entered, reverently holding the miraculous gown between them. Now the girls could see that the material was of plush black velvet dotted with tiny rectangular metallic golden flecks. It looked like midnight back home, Elena thought, with a thousand falling stars in the sky.

"And with it, you will wear these very large black onyx and gold earrings, these black onyx and gold combs to hold your hair up, and some lovely matching bracelets and rings Lucen has made just for this outfit," Lady Ulma continued. Elena realized that sometime in the last minutes Lucen must have entered the room. She smiled at him, and then her eyes dropped to the three-tiered tray he held. On the top tray, against an ivory background, were two black onyx and diamond bracelets, as well as a ring with a diamond in it that almost made her swoon.

Meredith was looking around the room as if she had stumbled into a private discussion and didn't know how to get out. Then she looked from the dress to the jewels to Lady Ulma again. Meredith was not one to lose her composure easily. But after a moment she simply went to Lady Ulma and hugged her fiercely, then went to Lucen and very gently put her hand on his forearm. It was clear that she couldn't speak.

Bonnie was studying the sketch with the eyes of a connoisseur now. "Those matching bracelets were made just for this dress, weren't they?" she said with a conspiratorial air.

To Elena's surprise Lady Ulma seemed uncomfortable. Then she spoke slowly. "The truth is...well, that Miss Meredith is...a slave. All slaves are required to wear some sort of symbolic bracelets when they travel outside their households." She turned her eyes down to the polished wooden floorboards. Her cheeks were flushed.

"Lady Ulma - oh, please, you can't think it matters to us?"

Lady Ulma's eyes flashed as she looked up. "Not matter?"

"Well," Elena said hautily, "it doesn't really matter...er, yet, because there's nothing to do about it, not now." Of course, the servants weren't in on the secrets of the Damon-Elena-Meredith-Bonnie relationship. Even Lady Ulma didn't see why Damon didn't free the three girls just in case "something should happen, may the Celestial Guardians forbid it." But the girls had formed a solid phalanx against it; it would be like jinxing their whole enterprise.

"Well, anyway," Bonnie was blathering, "I think the bracelets are beautiful. I mean she could hardly find anything more perfect for the dress, could she?" - striking at the professional sensibilities of the designer.

Lucen smiled modestly and Lady Ulma gave him a loving glance.

Meredith's face was still glowing. "Lady Ulma, I don't know how to thank you. I will wear this gown - and for tonight I will be someone I have never been before. Of course, you've drawn my hair up, or partly up. I don't usually wear it that way," Meredith finished weakly.

"You will tonight - up and high over that lovely wide brow of yours. This dress is to show off the charming curves of your bare shoulders and arms. It's a crime to cover them, day or night. And the hairstyle is to lay bare your exotic face instead of hiding it!" Lady Ulma said firmly.

Good, Elena thought. They've gotten her off the subject of symbolic slavery.

"You'll wear a touch of makeup as well - pale gold on your lids, and kohl to enhance and lengthen your lashes. A touch of golden lipstick, but no rouge; I don't believe in that for young girls. Your olive skin will complete the picture of a sultry maiden perfectly."

Meredith looked helplessly at Elena. "I don't usually wear makeup either," she said, but they both knew that she was beaten. Lady Ulma's vision would come to life.

"Don't call it a mermaid dress; she'll be a siren," Bonnie said enthusiastically. "But we'd better put a spell on it to keep all the vampire sailors away."

To Elena's surprise, Lady Ulma nodded solemnly. "My seamstress friend has sent a priestess today to bless all the garments and to keep you from being victimized by vampires, of course. If that meets with your approval?" She looked at Elena, who nodded.

"As long as they don't keep Damon out of the way," she added jokingly, and felt time freeze as Meredith and Bonnie immediately turned their eyes on her, hoping to catch something in Elena's expression that would give her away.

But Elena kept her expression neutral, as Lady Ulma continued, "Naturally, the restrictions would not apply to your - to Master Damon."

"Naturally," Elena said soberly.

"And now for the smallest beauty to go to the gala," Lady Ulma was saying to Bonnie, who bit her lip, blushing. "I have something very special for you. I don't know how long I've been yearning to work with this material. I've trudged by it in a shop window year after year, just aching to buy it and create with it. You see?" And the next set of sewing women came forward, holding a smaller, lighter frock between them, while Lady Ulma held up a sketch. Elena was already staring in amazement. The material was glorious - incredible - but especially clever was how it had been put together. The fabric was vivid peacock green-blue, with the most amazing hand stitching to represent a pattern of peacock eyes flaring up from the waist.

Bonnie's brown eyes had widened again. "This is for me?" she breathed, almost afraid to touch the material.

"Yes, and we're going to slick that hair of yours back until you look as sophisticated as your friend. Go ahead and try it on. I think you'll like the way this dress has come out." Lucen had retired and Meredith was already being carefully encased in the mermaid dress.

Bonnie happily began to strip.

Lady Ulma turned out to have been right. Bonnie loved the way she looked that evening. Right now she was being given the finishing touches, such as a delicate spray of citrus and rosewater; a fragrance made just for her. She stood before a giant silvered-glass mirror, just minutes before they were due to start off for the gala given by Fazina, the Silver Nightingale herself.

Bonnie turned a little, looking at the strapless, full-skirted dress in awe. Its bodice was made - or seemed to be made - entirely of the eyes of peacock feathers, arranged in a spray that was gathered together at her waist, showing off how tiny it was. There was another spray of larger feathers that pointed downward from the waist, front and back. The back actually had a small train of peacock feathers against emerald silk. In front, below the larger, downward pointing spray, a design worked in silver and gold, of stylized undulating plumes, all upside down, made its way to the bottom of the gown, which was edged with thin gold brocade.

As if this were not enough, Lady Ulma had had a fan made with real peacock eyes set in an emerald jade handle, with a tassel of softly clinking jade, citrine, and emerald charms at the bottom.

Around Bonnie's throat was a matching necklace of jade, inlaid with emerald, sapphire, and lapis lazuli. And around each of her wrists were several emerald jade bracelets that clicked together whenever she moved, the symbol of her slavery.

But Bonnie's eyes could hardly linger on them, and she couldn't summon up a proper hatred of the bracelets. She was thinking of how a special hairdresser had come to "slick back" Bonnie's strawberry-colored curls until, darkened into true red, they were plastered flat against her skull and held in place with jade and emerald clips. Her heart-shaped face had never looked so mature, so sophisticated. To emerald eyelids and kohl-darkened eyes, Lady Ulma had added a vivid red lipstick and had for once broken her rule and cleverly, wielding the brush herself, had added touches here and there of blusher so that Bonnie's translucent skin looked as if she were constantly coloring at some compliment. Delicately carved jade earrings with golden bells inside completed the ensemble, and Bonnie felt as if she were some Princess of the Ancient Orient.

"It's really some kind of miracle. Usually, I look like a pixie trying to dress up as a cheerleader or a flower girl," she confided, kissing Lady Ulma again and again, delighted to find that the lipstick stayed on her lips instead of transferring to her benefactress's cheeks. "But tonight I look like a young woman."

She would have kept on babbling, helpless to stop herself even though Lady Ulma already was trying to discreetly dab tears away from her eyes, except that at that moment Elena came in and she gasped.

Elena's dress had already been finished by the afternoon and so all Bonnie had seen of it was the sketch. But somehow that had failed to convey just what this dress would do for Elena.

Bonnie had secretly wondered if Lady Ulma were leaving too much to Elena's own natural beauty, and was hoping that Elena would be as excited about her own dress as everyone seemed to be about Bonnie's and Meredith's.

Now Bonnie understood.

"It is a called a goddess dress," Lady Ulma explained to the stunned silence in the room, as Elena walked in, and Bonnie dizzily thought that if goddesses had ever lived up on Mount Olympus, they would certainly have wanted to dress this way.

The trick of the dress lay in its very simplicity. It was made of milk-white silk, with a delicately pleated waist (Lady Ulma called the irregular tight pleating "ruching") which held two simple bodice panels that formed a V-neckline, showing off Elena's peach-blossom skin between them and behind them. These panels in turn were held at the shoulders by two carved clasps - gold inlaid with mother-of-pearl and diamonds. From the waist, the skirt fell straight in graceful, silken folds all the way to Elena's delicate sandals - again designed in gold, mother-of-pearl and diamonds. In the back, the two panels that clasped at the shoulder became straps and crossed over to once again meet at the pleated waist.

Such a simple dress, but so magnificent on the right girl.

At Elena's throat, an exquisitely designed golden and mother-of-pearl necklace in the stylized shape of a butterfly was inset with so many diamonds that it seemed to blaze with multicolored fire each time she moved and they caught the light. She wore this over the lapis and diamond pendant Stefan had given her, since she had flatly refused to take the pendant off. It didn't matter. The butterfly covered the pendant completely.

On each wrist Elena wore a wide bracelet of gold and mother-of-pearl inset with diamonds, creations that they had found in the secret jewel room, obviously made to go with the necklace.

And that was all. Elena's hair had been brushed and brushed and brushed until it formed a silky golden tumble of waves that hung below her shoulders in back, and she was wearing a touch of rose-colored lipstick. But her face, with its thick black eyelashes and lighter arched brows - and just now its look of excitement that parted her rose-colored lips and brought brilliant color to her cheeks - had been left entirely alone. Earrings that were just cascades of diamonds peeped through her gold tresses.

She's going to drive them crazy tonight, Bonnie thought, eyeing the daring dress with envy, but not with jealousy, instead rather reveling in the thought of the sensation Elena would make. She's wearing the simplest gown of any of us, but she still completely puts Meredith and me in the shade.

Yet Bonnie had never seen Meredith look better - or more exotic. She'd also never known what a stunning figure Meredith had, despite her friend's wide assortment of designer clothes.

Meredith shrugged when Bonnie told her this. She had a fan, too, black lacquer, that folded. Now she opened it and folded it shut again, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"We're in the hands of a genius," she said simply. "But we can't forget what we're really here for."
27#
发表于 2016-9-21 22:23 | 只看该作者
Chapter 26

"We have to keep our minds on saving Stefan," Elena was saying in the room Damon had taken over for his own, the old library in Lady Ulma's mansion.

"Where else would my mind be?" Damon said, never taking his eyes off her neck with its ornaments of mother-of-pearl and diamonds. Somehow the milk-white dress served to emphasize the slim soft column of Elena's throat, and Elena knew it.

She sighed.

"If we thought you really meant it, then we could all just relax."

"You mean be as relaxed as you are?"

Elena gave herself an inner shake. Damon might seem to be completely absorbed with one thing and one thing only, but his sense of self-preservation made sure that he was constantly on guard, and seeing not just what he wanted to see but everything that was around him.

And it was true that Elena was almost unbearably excited. Let the others think it was about her marvelous dress - and it was a marvelous dress, and Elena was profoundly grateful to Lady Ulma and her helpers for getting it done in time. What Elena was really excited about, though, was the chance - no, the certainty, she told herself firmly - that tonight she was going to find half of the key that would allow them to free Stefan. The thought of his face, of seeing him in the flesh was...

Was terrifying. Thinking about what Bonnie had said when she was asleep, Elena reached out for comfort and understanding, and somehow found that instead of holding Damon's hand, she was in Damon's arms.

The real question is: what will Stefan say about that night at the motel with Damon?

What would Stefan say? What was there to say?

"I'm frightened," she heard, and a minute too late, recognized her own voice.

"Well, don't think about it," Damon said. "It'll only make things worse."

But I've lied, Elena thought. You don't even remember it, or you'd be lying, too.

"Whatever happened, I promise I'll still be around for you," Damon said softly. "You've got my word on that, anyway."

Elena could feel his breath against her hair. "And on keeping your mind on the key?"

Yes, yes, but I haven't fed properly today. Elena started, then clasped Damon closer. For just an instant she'd felt, not merely a ravaging hunger, but a sharp pain that puzzled her. But now, before she could quite locate it in space, it was gone, and her connection to Damon had been abruptly cut off.

Damon.

"What?"

Don't shut me out.

"I'm not. I've just said all there is to say, that's all. You know I'll be looking for the key."

Thank you. Elena tried again. But you can't just starve -

Who said I was starving? Now Damon's telepathic connection was back, but something was missing. He was deliberately holding something back, and concentrating on assaulting her senses with something else - hunger. Elena could feel it rampaging in him, as if he were a tiger or wolf that had gone for days - for weeks - without making a kill.

The room did a slow spin around her.

"It's...all right," she whispered, amazed that Damon was able to stand and hold her at all, with his insides tearing at him that way. "Whatever...you need...take..."

And then she felt the most gentle probing at her throat of razor-sharp teeth.

She gave herself up to it, surrendering to the sensations.

In preparation for the Silver Nightingale's gala, where they would be searching for the first half of the double fox key to release Stefan, Meredith had been reading some of the hard copy she'd stuffed into her bag, from the huge amount of information she had downloaded from the Internet. She had done her best to describe everything that she'd learned to Elena and the others. But how could she be sure that she hadn't missed some vital clue, some vastly important thread of information that would make all the difference tonight between success and failure? Between finding a way to save Stefan and coming home defeated, while he languished in prison.

No, she thought, standing by a silvered mirror, almost afraid to look at the exotic beauty she had become. No, we can't even think of the word failure. For the sake of Stefan's life, we have to succeed. And we have to do it without getting caught.
28#
发表于 2016-9-22 11:25 | 只看该作者
本帖最后由 慕然回首 于 2016-9-22 11:49 编辑

Chapter 27

Elena felt confident and just a little light-headed as they set out for the Silver Nightingale's gala. However, when the four of them arrived on litters - Damon with Elena, Meredith with Bonnie (Lady Ulma being forbidden by her doctor to go to any festivities while she was pregnant) - at the Honorable Lady Fazina's palatial home, she was struck with something like terror.

The house was truly a palace, in the best of story-telling tradition, she thought. Minarets and towers soared above them, probably painted in blue and lavish gilt, but turned lavender by the sunlight, and looking almost lighter than air. To complement the sunlight, torches had been lit on either side of the path of the litters up the hill and some chemical had been added - or some magic used - to make their lights shine in varying colors so that they changed from golden, to red, to purple, to blue, to green, to silver, and these colors shone true. They took Elena's breath away, as the only things that were not tinged with red in the whole world that she could see. Damon had brought a bottle of Black Magic with him and was almost too high-spirited - no pun intended, Elena thought.

As their litter stopped at the top of the hill, Damon and Elena were helped out and down a hallway that cut out much of the sunlight. Above them hung delicate, lighted paper lanterns - some larger than the litter they'd been in a moment ago - brightly lighted and fancifully shaped which gave a festive, playful air to a palace otherwise so magnificent that it was a little intimidating.

They passed by lighted fountains, some of which had surprises - like the line of magical frogs that constantly leaped from lily pad to lily pad: plop, plop, plop, like the sound of rain on a rooftop, or a huge gilded serpent that coiled among trees and over the heads of visitors, winding from there to the ground and then back up to the trees again.

Then again, it was the ground that would turn transparent with all manner of magical schools of fish, sharks, eels, and dolphins cavorting, while in the dim blue depths far below loomed the figure of a gigantic whale. Elena and Bonnie hurried quickly over this portion of the path.

It was clear that the owner of this estate could afford any kind of extravaganza her heart desired, and that above all things what she enjoyed the chiefest was music, for in each area, splendidly - sometimes bizarrely - dressed orchestra were playing, or there might be only one famous soloist, singing from a high gilded cage perhaps twenty-five feet above the ground.

Music...music and lights everywhere...

Elena herself, although thrilled by the sights, sounds, and glorious scents coming from huge banks of flowers as well as from the guests, both male and female, felt a slight fear like a small rock in her stomach. She had thought her dress and diamonds so elaborate when she had left Lady Ulma's estate. But now that she was here at Lady Fazina's...well, there were too many rooms, too many people, as fancifully and finely clad as herself and her sister "personal assistants." She was afraid that - well, that that woman over there, dripping jewels from her delicate three-tier diamond and emerald tiara to her delicate diamond-circled toes, made her own unadorned hair look dowdy or laughable, at such a grand affair.

Do you know how old she is? Elena almost jumped to hear Damon's voice in her head.

Who? Elena replied, trying at least to keep her envy - her worry - out of her telepathic voice. And am I projecting that loudly? she added in alarm.

Not all that loudly, but it never hurts to tune it down. And you know perfectly well "who": that giraffe you were eyeing, Damon replied. For your information, she's about two hundred years older than I am, and she's trying to look around thirty, which is ten years younger than when she became a vampire.

Elena blinked. What are you trying to say?

Send some Power to your ears, Damon suggested. And stop worrying!

Elena obediently increased slightly the Power to what she still thought of as her burst ear nodes, and conversations suddenly became audible all around her.

...oh, the goddess in white. She's just a child, but what a figure...

...yes, the one with the golden hair. Magnificent, isn't she?...Oh, by Hades, look at that girl......Did you see the prince and princess over there? I wonder if they'd swap...or - or - do a quartet, dear?

This was more like what Elena was used to hearing at parties. It gave her more confidence. It also, as she allowed her eyes to sweep more boldly across the opulently costumed crowed, caused her to feel a sudden surge of love and respect for Lady Ulma, who had designed and overseen the construction of three glorious dresses in only a week.

She's a genius, Elena informed Damon solemnly, knowing that through their mindlink he would see who she meant. Look, Meredith already has a crowd around her. And...and...

And she's not acting much like Meredith at all, Damon finished, sounding slightly uneasy.

Meredith didn't seem uneasy in the least. She had her face turned deliberately to show off a classical profile to her admirers, but it wasn't the profile of level-headed, serene Meredith Sulez at all. It was a sultry, exotic girl, who looked as if she might very well be able to sing the Habanera from Carmen. She had her fan open and was gracefully, languorously fanning herself. The soft but warm indoor lighting made her bare shoulders and arms gleam like pearl above the black velvet dress, which seemed even more mysterious and striking than it had back at home. In fact, it seemed to have stricken one devotee to the heart already; he was kneeling before her with a red rose in his hand, so hastily picked from one of the arrangements that a thorn had pricked him and blood welled from his thumb. Meredith didn't seem to have noticed. Both Elena and Damon felt for the young man, who was blond and extremely handsome. Elena felt sorry...and Damon felt hungry.

She certainly seems to have come out of her shell, ventured Damon.

Oh, Meredith doesn't ever really come out, Elena replied. It's all playacting. But tonight I think it's the dresses that are doing it. Meredith is dressed like a siren, and so she's acting all sultry. Bonnie's dressed like a peacock and...look.

She nodded down the long hallway that led to a huge room in front of them. Bonnie, dressed in what looked like real peacock feathers, had a crowd of her own followers - and that was just what they were doing: following. Bonnie's every movement was light and birdlike and her jade bracelets clinked together on her small rounded arms, her earrings chimed with each toss of her head, and her feet seemed to twinkle in golden sandals in front of her peacock train.

"You know, it's strange," Elena murmured, as they reached the large room and at last sound was muted so she could hear Damon's physical voice. "I didn't realize it, but Lady Ulma designed our dresses at different levels of the animal world."

"Hm?" Damon was looking at her throat again. But fortunately at that moment a handsome man dressed in formal Earth clothes - tuxedo, cummerbund, and so on - came by with Black Magic in large silver goblets. Damon drained his in one gulp and took another from the gracefully bowing waiter. Then he and Elena took seats - on the outside of the back row, even if this was a rudeness to their hostess. They needed to be free to maneuver.

"Well, Meredith is a mermaid, which is the highest order, and she's acting like a siren. Bonnie is a bird, so that's the next highest order, and she is acting like a bird: watching all the boys display themselves while she keeps laughing. And I'm a butterfly - so I suppose I'll be a social butterfly tonight. With you beside me, I hope."

"How...cute," Damon said heavily. "But what exactly makes you think you're supposed to be a butterfly?"

"Well, the designs, silly," Elena said, and she lifted her mother-of-pearl and gold and diamond fan and gave him a tiny butterfly rap on the forehead with it. Then she opened it to show him a masterly sketch of the same design as her necklace on its front, decorated with tiny dots of diamond, gold, and mother-of-pearl where they would not be harmed by the folds.

"You see? A butterfly," she said, not displeased with the image.

Damon traced the outline with one long, tapering finger that reminded her so much of Stefan's that it hurt her throat, and stopped at six stylized lines above the head. "Since when do butterflies have hair?"

His finger moved to two horizontal lines between the wings. "Or arms?"

"Those are legs," Elena told him, amused. "What kind of thing with arms and legs and a head has six hairs and wings?"

"A tipsy vampire," suggested a voice above them and Elena looked up, surprised to see Sage. "May I sit with you?" he asked. "I couldn't manage a shirt, but my fairy godmother did conjure up a vest."

Elena, laughing, scooted over a seat so that he could take the aisle seat by Damon. He was much cleaner than when she had last seen him working around the house, although his hair was still in long wild unruly curls. She noted however, that his fairy godmother had scented him with cedar and sandalwood, and provided him with Dolce & Gabbana jeans and vest. He looked...magnifique. There was no sign of his animals.

"I thought you weren't coming," Elena said to him.

"You can say that? Garbed as you are in celestial white and gold? You mentioned the gala; I took your wish as a command."

Elena giggled. Of course, everyone was treating her differently tonight. It was the dress. Sage, murmuring something about his latent heterosexuality, swore that the image on her necklace and fan was a phoenix. The very polite demon on her right, who had deep mauve skin and small, curling white horns, deferentially submitted that it looked to him like the goddess Ishtar, who had apparently sent him to the Dark Dimension a few millennia ago for tempting people to sloth. Elena made a mental note to ask Meredith whether this meant tempting them to eat sloths, which she knew were some kind of wild animal that didn't move around much, or something else.

Then Elena thought that Lady Ulma had called the dress a "goddess dress," hadn't she? It was certainly a dress you could only wear if your body was very young and very close to perfection, because there was no way to fit corsetry into it or even to drape it to minimize an unflattering feature. The only things under the dress were Elena's own firm young physique and a pair of scant, soft flesh-colored lace underwear. Oh, and a spray of jasmine perfume.

So it's a goddess I feel like, she thought, thanking the demon (who stood and bowed). People were taking their seats for the Silver Nightingale's first performance. Elena had to admit to a longing to see Lady Fazina, and besides, it was too early to try for a restroom trip - Elena had already noticed that guards were posted at all the doors.

There were two harps on a dais in the middle of a great circle of chairs. And then suddenly everyone was on their feet and clapping, and Elena would have seen nothing, if the Lady Fazina had not chosen to walk down the same aisle Elena and Damon had taken. As it was, she paused right beside Sage to acknowledge the roar of acclamation, and Elena had a perfect view of her.

She was a lovely young woman, who to Elena's surprise looked hardly older than twenty, and was nearly as small as Bonnie. This diminutive creature obviously took her sobriquet very seriously: she was dressed entirely in a gown of silver mesh. Her hair was metallic silver, too, swept high in front and very short in back. Her train was barely attached to her, by two simple clasps at the shoulders. It floated horizontally behind her, constantly in motion, more like a moonbeam or a cloud than like real material until she got to the central dais and ascended it, then walked once around the tall uncovered harp, at which point the suspended part of the cape fell softly and gracefully to the floor in a semicircle around her.

And then came the magic of the Silver Nightingale's voice. She began by playing the tall harp, which seemed even taller in comparison to her small body. She could make the harp sing under her fingers, coax it to cry like the wind or make music that seemed to descend from heaven in glissandos. Elena wept throughout her first song, even though it was sung in some foreign language. It was so piercingly sweet that it reminded Elena of Stefan, of the times they had been together, communicating by only the softest words and touches...

But Lady Fazina's most impressive instrument was her voice. Her tiny body could generate an extraordinary volume when she wanted it to. And as she sang one poignant, minor-tuned song after another, Elena could feel her skin break out into gooseflesh, and a trembling in her legs. She felt that at any moment she might fall to her knees as the melodies filled her heart.

When someone touched her from behind, Elena started violently, brought back too quickly from the fantasy world the music had woven around her. But it was only Meredith, who despite her own love for music had a very practical suggestion for their group.

"I was going to say, why not start now, while everyone else is listening?" she whispered. "Even the guards are out of it. We agreed on two by two, yes?"


"It would be my privilege, Madame."

The five of them set out into the Silver Nightingale's mansion.
29#
发表于 2016-9-22 12:18 | 只看该作者
Chapter 28

They walked right by the weeping door-guards. But very quickly, they discovered that while almost everyone was listening to Lady Fazina, in each room of the palace that was open to the public, a black-clad, white-gloved steward awaited, ready to give out information, and to keep a watchful eye on his lady's possessions.

The first room that gave them any kind of hope was Lady Fazina's Hall of Harpery, a room devoted entirely to the display of harps, from ancient, bowlike, single-stringed instruments, undoubtedly played by individuals who were similar to cavedwellers, to tall, gilded, orchestral harps like the one Fazina was now playing, the music audible throughout the palace. Magic, Elena thought again. They seem to use it here instead of technology.

"Each kind of harp has a unique key to tune the strings," Meredith whispered, looking down the length of the hall. On each side the line of harps marched into the distance. "One of those keys might be the key."

"But how will we even know?" Bonnie was fanning herself lightly with her peacock feather fan. "What's the difference between a harp key and the fox key?"

"I don't know. And I've never heard of a key being kept in a harp, either. It would rattle around the sound box every time the harp shifted slightly," Meredith admitted.

Elena bit her lip. It was such a simple, reasonable question. She should feel dismayed, should be wondering how they could ever find one small half of a key in this place. Especially considering that the clue they had - that it was in the Silver Nightingale's instrument, suddenly seemed absurd.

"I don't suppose," Bonnie said a little giddily, "that the instrument is her voice, and that if we reach down her throat..."

Elena turned to look at Meredith, who was looking heavenward - or at whatever was above this hideous dimension. "I know," Meredith said. "No more drinks for birdbrain here. Although I suppose it's possible that they give out little silver whistles or instruments as favors - all big parties used to do that, you know - give you a gift."

"How," Damon said in a carefully expressionless tone, "would they possibly get the key into a favor for a party being given at least weeks away, and how could they ever hope to retrieve it? Misao might as well have told Elena, 'We threw the key away.'"

"Well," began Meredith, "I'm not at all sure that they did mean for the keys to be retrievable, even by them. And Misao could have meant 'You'd have to search all the garbage from the night of this gala' - or some other party Fazina performed at. I imagine she gets asked to play at a lot of other people's parties, too."

Elena hated bickering, even though she was a champion bickerer herself. But she was a goddess tonight. Nothing was impossible. If only she could remember...

Something like white lightning struck her brain.

For just an instant - one instant - she was back, struggling with Misao. Misao was in her fox form, biting and scratching - and snarling out a reply to Elena's question about where the two halves of the fox key were. "As if you would understand the answers I could give. If I told you that one was inside the silver nightingale's instrument, would that give you any kind of idea?"

Yes. Those had been the exact words, the real words that Misao had spoken. Elena heard her own voice, repeating the words distinctly now.

And then she felt something like an arc of lightning leave her mind - only to meet another's not far away. The next thing she knew her eyes were flying open in surprise because Bonnie was speaking in that blank toneless way she always did when making a prophecy:

"Each half of the fox key is shaped like a single fox, with two ears, two eyes, and a snout. The two fox key halves are gold and covered with gems - and their eyes are green. The key you seek is yet in the Silver Nightingale's instrument."

"Bonnie!" Elena said. She could see that Bonnie's knees were trembling, her eyes unfocused. Then they opened and Elena watched as confusion surged in to fill the blankness.

"What's going on?" Bonnie said, looking around to see everyone looking at her. "What - what happened?"

"You told us what the fox keys look like!" Elena couldn't help this exclamation - almost a shout of joy. Now that they knew what they were looking for they could free Stefan; they would free Stefan. Nothing would stop Elena now. Bonnie had just helped move this quest to an entirely different level.

But while she was quaking inside with joy at the prophecy, Meredith, in her own level-headed way, was taking care of the prophet. Meredith said quietly, "She's probably going to faint. Would you please..."

Meredith didn't have to ask further, for the vampires, Damon and Sage, were each quick enough to catch and support Bonnie on opposite sides. Damon was staring down at the diminutive girl in surprise.

"Thanks, Meredith," Bonnie said, and let out a breath, blinking. "I don't think I'll faint," she added, and then with a glance up at Damon through her lashes, "But it's probably just as well to make sure."

Damon nodded and got a better grip, looking serious. Sage turned half away, seeming to have something stuck in his throat.

"What did I say? I don't remember!"

And after Elena had solemnly repeated Bonnie's words it was just like Meredith to say, "You're sure now, Bonnie? Does that sound right?"

"I'm sure. I'm positive," Elena cut in. She was positive. The Goddess Ishtar and Bonnie had unlocked the past for her and shown her the key.

"All right. What if Bonnie and Sage and I take this room, and two of us can be distracting the steward, while the third looks in the harps for keys?" Meredith suggested.

"Right. Let's do it!" Elena said.

Meredith's plan proved to be more difficult in practice than it sounded. Even with two glorious young girls in the room and one terminally fit guy, the steward kept spinning in little circles and catching one or another of them handling and peering into a harp.

Naturally, the handling was strictly forbidden. It put the harps further out of tune and it could easily damage them, especially since the only way to make absolutely sure that a small golden key was not in a harp's sound box was to actually shake the harp and listen for rattling.

Worse, each of the harps was displayed in its own little nook, complete with dramatic lighting, a flamboyant painted screen behind it (most of them portraits of Fazina playing the harp in question), and a plush red rope across the front of the nook that said "Keep Out" as plainly as a sign.

In the end Bonnie, Meredith, and Sage resorted to having Sage Influence the steward to be entirely passive - something he was only able to do for a few minutes of time, or the steward would notice the gaps in Lady Fazina's program. They would then each frantically search harps while the steward stood like a wax figure.

Meanwhile Damon and Elena were wandering the palace, looking through the rest of the mansion that was off-limits to visitors. If they found nothing, they intended to search the more available rooms as the gala continued.

It was dangerous work, this stealing in and out of darkened, cordoned-off - often locked - empty rooms: dangerous and strangely thrilling to Elena. Somehow, it seemed that fear and passion were more closely related than she had fully realized. Or at least, it seemed that way with her and Damon.

Elena couldn't help noticing and admiring little things about him. He seemed to be able to pick any lock with a single little implement he produced from inside his black jacket, the way other people produce fountain pens, and he had such a swift, graceful way of taking the pick out and putting it back in. Economy of motion, she knew, earned by living for around five centuries.

Also, no one could argue it: Damon seemed to keep his head in any situation, which made them a good pair right now when she was striding around like a goddess who could not be bound by the rules of mortals. This was even enhanced by the scares she got: shapes that looked like guards or sentries looming up at her turned out to be a stuffed bear, a slim cupboard, and something Damon didn't allow her more than a glimpse of, but what looked like a mummified human. Damon wasn't fazed by any of them.

If I could just channel some more Power to my eyes, Elena thought, and things immediately brightened up. Her Power was obeying her!

God! I'll have to wear this dress for the rest of my life: it makes me feel so...powerful. So...unashamed. I'll have to wear it to college, if I ever get to college, to impress my professors; and to Stefan's and my wedding - just so people understand I'm not a slut; and - to the beach, just to give the guys something to ogle...

She stifled a giggle and was surprised to see Damon glance with mock reproach at her. Of course, he was as closely focused on her as she was on him. But it was a slightly different case, of course, because, to his eyes, she wore a big label with STRAWBERRY JAM written on it, tied around her neck. And he was getting hungry again. Very hungry.

Next time I'm going to see that you eat properly before you go out, she thought at him.

Let's worry about succeeding this time before we start planning for next time, he returned, with just the faintest firefly hint of his 250-kilowatt smile.

But it was all mixed in, of course, with a little of the sardonic triumph that Damon always carried with him. Elena swore to herself that laugh at her as he might, beg her as he might, threaten or cajole as he might, she wouldn't give Damon the satisfaction of even one nip tonight. He could just pop the top off another jam pot, she thought.

Eventually, the sweet music of the concert was stilled and Elena and Damon dashed back to meet with Bonnie, Meredith, and Sage in the Harpery Hall. Elena could have guessed the news by Bonnie's stance, even if she hadn't already known from Sage's silence. But the news was worse than Elena could have imagined: not only had the three found nothing in the Harpery Hall, but they had finally resorted to quizzing the steward, who could speak, if not move, under Sage's Influence.

"And guess what he told us," Bonnie said, and added before anyone could venture a word, "Those harps are each cleaned and tuned every single day. Fazina has, like, a whole army of servants for them. And anything, anything that didn't belong to a harp would be reported at once. And nothing has been! It just isn't there!"

Elena felt herself shrink from omniscient goddess to baffled human. "I was worried it would be like this," she admitted, sighing. "It would have been just too easy the other way. All right, Plan B. You mingle with the gala guests, trying to get a look at each room that's open to the public. Try to dazzle Fazina's consort and pump him for information. See if Misao and Shinichi have been here recently. Damon and I will keep looking in the rooms that are supposed to be closed off."

"That's so dangerous," Meredith said, frowning. "I'm afraid of what the penalty might be if you're caught."

"I'm afraid of what the penalty might be to Stefan if we don't find this key tonight," Elena retorted shortly, and turned on her heel, leaving.

Damon followed her. They searched endless darkened rooms, now not even knowing whether they were looking for a harp or something else. First Damon would check if there were a breathing body inside the room (there might be a vampire guard, of course, but there wasn't much to do about that), then he picked the lock. Things were working seamlessly until they reached a room at the end of a long hall facing west - Elena had long since gotten lost in the palace, but she could unerringly tell west, because it was where the bloated sun hung.

Damon had picked the lock of this room and Elena had originally started forward eagerly. She searched the room, which contained, frustratingly, a silver-framed picture of a harp, but with nothing as bulky as the half of the fox key inside it, even when she had carefully used Damon's lock pick to unscrew the backing.

It was while she was placing this picture back on the wall that they both heard the thump. Elena winced, praying that none of the black-suited "security servants" who roamed the palace had heard the noise.

Damon quickly put a hand over her mouth and dialed the gaslight knob into darkness.

But they both could hear it now...footsteps approaching from outside in the hallway. Someone had heard the thump. The footsteps stopped outside the door and there was the distinct sound of an upper servant's discreet cough.

Elena whirled, feeling in that moment as if Wings of Redemption were within her reach. It would only require the slightest rise in adrenaline and she would have the security worker on his or her knees, sobbing in the penitence of a lifetime's work at evil. Elena and Damon would be gone before -

But Damon had another idea, and Elena was startled into going along with it.

When the door opened silently a moment later, the steward found a couple locked in such a tight embrace that they seemed not even to notice the intrusion. Elena could practically feel his indignation. The desire of a couple of guests to discreetly embrace in the privacy of Lady Fazina's many public rooms was understandable, but this was part of the private household. As he turned the lights up, Elena peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. Her psychic senses were open enough to catch his thoughts. He was going over the valuables in the room with an experienced but bored gaze. The exquisite miniature vase with the trailing roses picked out in rubies and emerald-encrusted vines; the magically preserved 5,000-year-old wooden Sumerian lyre; the twin pair of solid gold candlesticks in the shape of rearing dragons; the Egyptian funerary mask with its dark, elongated eyeholes seeming to watch out of its brilliantly painted features...all were here. It wasn't even as if her ladyship kept anything of great value here, but still, "This room is not part of the public display," he told Damon, who merely clasped Elena closer.

Yes, Damon seemed very determined to put on a good show for the steward...or something like that. But hadn't they already...done so? Elena's thoughts were losing coherency. The last thing...the very last thing that they could afford...was to...lose the chance of...finding the fox key. Elena started to pull away, and then realized that she mustn't.

Mustn't. Not couldn't. She was property, expensive property to be sure, decked out the way she was tonight, but Damon's to dispose of as he chose. While someone else was looking on, she must not seem to disobey her master's wishes.

Still, Damon was taking this too far...farther than he had ever taken liberties with her, although, she thought wryly, he didn't know that. He was caressing the skin left unprotected by the ivory goddess dress, her arms, her back, even her hair. He knew how she liked that, how she could somehow feel it when her hair was held and the ends caressed softly or gently crushed in a fist.

Damon! She was down to the last resort now: pleading. Damon, if they detain us, or do anything to us that keeps us from finding the key tonight - when will we have another chance?...She let him feel her desperation, her guilt, even the treacherous desire she had to forget everything and let each minute carry her further on this wave of ardor that he had created. Damon, I'll...say it if you want. I'm...begging you. Elena could feel her eyes prickling as tears flooded them.

No tears. Elena heard Damon's telepathic voice gratefully. There was something strange about it, though. It couldn't be starvation - he'd had her blood not much more than two hours ago. And it wasn't passion, for she could hear - and sense - that, all too clearly. Yet Damon's telepathic voice was so taut with control that it almost frightened her. More, she knew he could feel that it frightened her and that he chose to do nothing about it. No explanation. No exploration, either, she realized as she found that behind the control, his mind was entirely shut to her.

The only thing she could liken the feeling that she got from his steely control was pain. Pain that was just on the edge of the endurable.

But from what? Elena wondered helplessly.

What could cause him pain like that?

Elena couldn't waste their time on wondering what was wrong with Damon. She turned up the Power of her own hearing and began to listen at the doors before they entered.

It was while she was listening that suddenly a new idea solidified in Elena's mind, and she stopped Damon in a pitch-dark hallway and tried to explain to him what kind of room she was looking for. What, in modern days, would be called a "home office."

Damon, familiar with the architecture of great mansions, took her, after only a few false starts, into what was clearly a lady's writing room. Elena's eyes were by now as keen as his in the dimness as they searched by the light of a single candle.

While Elena was being frustrated after searching a remarkable desk with pigeonholes for secret drawers, and not finding any, Damon was checking the hallway.

"I hear someone outside," he said. "I think it's time to leave now."

But Elena was still looking. And - as her eyes raced across the room - she saw a small writing desk with an old-fashioned chair and an assortment of various pens, from ancient to modern, flaunting themselves from elaborate holders.

"Let's go while it's still clear," Damon murmured impatiently.

"Yes," Elena said distractedly. "All right..."

And then she saw.

Without an instant's hesitation she strode across the room to the desk and picked up a pen with a brilliant silver plume. It wasn't a genuine quill pen, of course; it was a fountain pen made to look elegant and old-fashioned - with a plume. The pen itself was curved to fit her hand, and the wood felt warm.

"Elena, I don't feel very..."

"Damon, shhh," Elena said, ignoring him, too absorbed in what she was doing to really hear. First: try to write. No go. Something was blocking the cartridge. Second: unscrew the fountain-pen carefully, as if to refill its cartridge, while all the time her heart was clamoring in her ears and her hands were shaking. Keep moving slowly...don't miss anything...for God's sake don't let anything fall away and bounce in this dimness. The two parts of the pen parted in her hand...

...and onto the dark green desk pad fell a small, heavy, curved piece of metal. It had just fit inside the widest part of the pen. She had it in her hand and was reassembling the pen before she could get a good look at it. But then...she had to open her hand and see.

The small crescent-shaped object dazzled her eyes in the light, but it was just like the description Bonnie had given Elena and Meredith. A tiny representation of a fox with a nominal body and a jewel-encrusted head that sported two flat ears. The eyes were two sparkling green stones. Emeralds?

"Alexandrite," Damon said in a bedroom whisper. "Folklore has it that they change color in candlelight or firelight. They reflect the flame."

Elena, who had been leaning back against him, recalled with a chill the way Damon's eyes had reflected flame when he had been possessed: the bloodred flame of the malach - of Shinichi's cruelty.

"So," Damon demanded, "how did you do it?"

"This is really one of the two pieces of the fox key?"

"Well, it's hardly something that belongs in a fountain pen. Maybe it's a Crackerjack prize. But you went right to it the moment we entered the room. Even vampires need time to think, my precious princess."

Elena shrugged. "It's too easy, actually. When it was clear that all those harp keys were no goes, I asked myself what else was an instrument that you'd find in someone's house. A pen is a writing instrument. Then I just had to find out whether Lady Fazina had a study or writing room."

Damon let out a breath. "Hell's demons, you little innocent. You know what I've been looking for? Trap doors. Secret entries to dungeons. The only other instrument I could think of was an 'instrument of torture' and you'd be surprised at how many of them you'll find in this fair city."

"But not in her house - !" Elena's voice rose dangerously, and they were both silent a moment to make up for it, listening, on tenterhooks, for any sound from the hallway.

There was none.

Elena let out her breath. "Quick! Where, where will it be safe?" She was realizing that the one fault of the goddess dress was that there was absolutely no place to hide anything. She'd have to speak to Lady Ulma about that for next time.

"Down, down in the pocket of my jeans," Damon said, seeming to be as urgent and shaking as badly as she was. When he had jammed it deep into the recesses of his black Armani jeans he caught her by both hands. "Elena! Do you realize? We've done it. We've actually done it!"

"I know!" Tears were leaking out of Elena's eyes and all of Lady Fazina's music seemed to be swelling in one great, perfect chord. "We did it together!"

And then somehow - like all the other "somehows" that were getting to be a habit with them, Elena was in Damon's arms, sliding her own arms under his jacket to feel his warmth, his solidity. She wasn't surprised, either, to feel a double piercing at her throat when she dropped her head back: her lovely panther was really only a little tamed, and needed to learn a few basics of dating etiquette; such as you kiss before you bite.

He had said he was hungry earlier, she remembered, and she had ignored him, too enthralled by the silver pen to put the words together. But she put them together now, and understood - except why he seemed to be so exceptionally hungry tonight.

Maybe even...excessively hungry.

Damon, she thought gently, you're taking a lot.

She could feel no response but the raw hunger of the panther.

Damon, this could be dangerous...for me. This time Elena put as much Power as she could into the words she sent.

Still no response from Damon, but she was floating now, down into darkness. And that gave her the vague thread of an idea.

Where are you? Are you here? she called, picturing the little boy.

And then she saw him, chained to his boulder, curled up in a ball, with his fists covering his eyes.

What's wrong? Elena asked immediately, floating near to him, concerned.

He's hurting! He's hurting!

Are you hurt? Show me, Elena said instantly.

No! He's hurting you. He could kill you!

Husshh. Husshhh. She tried to cradle him.

We have to make him hear us!

All right, Elena said. She really was feeling odd and weak. But she turned, along with the child, and cried voicelessly: Damon! Please! Elena says stop!

And a miracle happened.

Both she and the child could feel it. The little sting of fangs being withdrawn. The stop of energy flow from Elena to Damon.

And then, ironically, the miracle began to take her away from the child, with whom she really wanted to speak.

No! Wait! she tried to tell Damon, clinging to the child's hands as hard as she could, but she was being catapulted back to consciousness as if by a hurricane. The darkness faded. In its place was a room, too bright, its one candle blazing like a police searchlight aimed directly at her. She shut her eyes and felt the warmth and heaviness of the corporeal Damon in her arms.

"I'm sorry! Elena, can you speak? I didn't realize how much - " There was something wrong with Damon's voice. Then she understood. Damon's fangs were unretracted.

Wha - ? Everything was wrong. They'd been so happy, but - but now her right arm felt wet.

Elena pulled away from Damon entirely, staring at her arms, which were red and with something that wasn't paint.

She was still too worked up to ask questions properly. She slipped behind Damon and pulled his black leather jacket off him. In the brilliant light she could see his black silk shirt marred by line after line of dried, partially dried, or just plain wet blood.

"Damon!" Her first reaction was horror without a touch of guilt or understanding. "What happened? Did you get in a fight? Damon, tell me!"

And then something in her mind presented her with a number. Since she had been a child, she had been able to count. In fact. she'd learned to count to ten before her first birthday. Therefore, she'd had seventeen full years of learning to count the number of irregular, deep, still-bleeding cuts in Damon's back.

Ten.

Elena looked down at her own bloody arms and at the goddess dress, which was now the horror dress because its pure milky whiteness was marred with brilliant red.

Red that should have been her blood. Red that must have felt like sword slashes into Damon's back as he channeled the pain and the marks of the Night of her Discipline from her to him.

And he carried me all the way home. The thought came swimming in from nowhere. Without a word about it. I would never have known....

And he still hasn't healed. Will he ever heal?

That was when she started screaming on all frequencies.
30#
发表于 2016-9-22 12:19 | 只看该作者
Chapter 29

Someone was trying to make her drink out of a glass. Elena's sense of smell was so acute that she could taste what was in the glass already - Black Magic wine. And she didn't want that! No! She spat it out. They couldn't make her drink.

"Mon enfant, it is for your own good. Now, drink it." Elena turned her head away. She felt the darkness and the hurricane rushing up to take her. Yes. That was better. Why wouldn't they leave her alone?

In the very deepest trenches of communication, a little boy was with her in the dark. She remembered him, but not his name. She held out her arms and he came into them and it seemed that his chains were lighter than they had been...when? Before. That was all she could remember.

Are you all right? she whispered to the child. Down here, deep in the heart of communion, a whisper was a shout.

Don't cry. No tears, he begged her, but the words reminded her of something she couldn't bear to think of, and she put her fingers to his lips, gently silencing him.

Too loud, a voice from Outside came rumbling in. "So, mon enfant, you have decided to become un vampire encore une fois."

Is that what is happening? she whispered to the child. Am I dying again? To become a vampire?

I don't know! the child cried. I don't know anything. He's angry. I'm afraid.

Sage won't hurt you, she promised. He's already a vampire, and your friend.

Not Sage...

Then who are you afraid of?

If you die again, I'll be wrapped in chains all over. The child showed her a pitiable picture of himself covered by coil after coil of heavy chains. In his mouth, gagging him. Pinning his arms to his sides and his legs to the ball. Moreover, the chains were spiked so that everywhere they dug into the child's soft flesh, blood flowed.

Who would do such a thing? Elena cried. I'll make him wish he'd never been born. Tell me who's going to do this!

The child's face was sad and perplexed. I will, he said sadly. He will. He/I. Damon. Because we'll have killed you.

But if it's not his fault...

We have to. We have to. But maybe I'll die, the doctor says... There was a definite lilt of hope in the last sentence.

It decided Elena. If Damon was not thinking clearly, then maybe she wasn't thinking clearly, she reasoned out slowly. Maybe...maybe she should do what Sage wanted.

And Dr. Meggar. She could discern his voice as if through a thick fog. " - sake, you've been working all night. Give someone else a chance."

Yes...all night. Elena had not wanted to wake up again, and she had a powerful will.

"Maybe switch sides?" someone - a girl - a young girl - was suggesting. Little in voice, but strong-willed, too. Bonnie.

"Elena...It's Meredith. Can you feel me holding your hand?" A pause, then very much louder, excitedly, "Hey, she squeezed my hand! Did you see? Sage, tell Damon to get in here quick."

Drifting...

"...drink a little more, Elena? I know, I know, you're sick of it. But drink un peu for my sake, will you?"

Drifting...

"Tr��s bon, mon enfant! Maintenant, what about a little milk? Damon believes you can stay human if you drink some milk."

Elena had two thoughts about this. One was that if she drank any more of anything, she might explode. Another was that she wasn't going to make any foolish promises.

She tried to speak but it came out in a thread of a whisper. "Tell Damon - I won't come up unless he lets the little boy free."

"Who? What little boy?"

"Elena, sweetie, all the little boys on this estate are free."

Meredith: "Why not let her tell him?"

Dr. Meggar: "Elena, Damon is right here on the couch. You've both been very sick, but you're going to be fine. Here, Elena, we can move the examination table so you can talk to him. There, it's done."

Elena tried to open her eyes, but everything was ferociously bright. She took a breath and tried again. Still much too bright. And she didn't know how to dim her vision anymore. She spoke with her eyes shut to the presence she felt in front of her: I can't leave him alone again. Especially if you're going to load him with chains and gag him.

Elena, Damon said shakily, I haven't led a good life. But I haven't kept slaves before, I swear. Ask anyone. And I wouldn't do that to a child.

You have, and I know his name. And I know that all he's made of is gentleness, and kindness, and good nature...and fear.

The low rumble of Sage's voice, "...agitating her..." the slightly louder murmur of Damon's: "I know she's off her head, but I'd still like to know the name of this little boy I'm supposed to have done this to. How does that agitate her?"

More rumbling, then: "But can't I just ask her? At least I can clear my name of these charges." Then, out loud: "Elena? Can you tell me what child I'm supposed to have tortured like this?"

She was so tired. But she answered aloud, whispering, "His name is Damon, of course."

And Meredith's own exhausted whisper, "Oh, my God. She was willing to die for a metaphor."

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