by L. J. Smith
It also swooped magnificently down and then back up again. Even looking at it gave the eye a sort of mini–thrill ride. The only problem was that it didn’t include a safety belt, a seat, two handrails, and a uniformed guide saying, “Hands and feet must be kept inside the attraction at all times!” It did have a single, thin, creeper-woven rope to hold on to on the left.
“Look,” Stefan was saying, as quietly and intently as Elena had ever heard him speak, “we can hold onto each other. We can go go one by one, very slowly—”
“NOOO!” Bonnie put into that one word a psychic shriek that almost defeaned Elena. “No, no, no, no, NO! You don’t understand! I can’t DO IT!” She flung her backpack down.
Then she began laughing and crying at the same time in a full-blown attack of hysterics. Elena had an impulse to dash water in her face. She had a stronger impulse to throw herself down beside Bonnie and shriek, “And neither can I! It’s insane!” But what good would that do?
A few minutes later Damon was talking quietly to Bonnie, unaffected by the outburst. Stefan was pacing in circles. Elena was trying to think of Plan A, while a little voice chanted inside her head, You can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t do it, either.
This was all just a phobia. They could probably train Bonnie out of it—if, say, they had a year or two.
Stefan, on one of his circular trips near her, said, “And how are you about heights, love?”
Elena decided to put a brave face on it. “I don’t know. I think I can do it.”
Stefan looked pleased. “To save your hometown.”
“Yes…but it’s too bad nothing works here. I could try to use my Wings for flying, but I can’t control them—”
And that kind of magic is simply not available here, Stefan’s voice said in her mind.
But telepathy is. You can hear me, too, can’t you?
They thought of the answer simultaneously, and Elena saw the light of the idea breaking on Stefan’s face even as she began to speak.
“Influence Bonnie! Make her think she’s a tightrope walker—a performer since she was a toddler. But don’t make her too playful so she doesn’t bounce the rest of us off!”
With that light in his face, Stefan looked…too good. He seized both Elena’s hands, whirled her around once as if she weighed nothing, picked her up, and kissed her.
And kissed her.
And kissed her until Elena felt her soul dripping off her fingertips.
They shouldn’t have done it in front of Damon. But Elena’s euphoria was clouding her judgment, and she couldn’t control herself.
Neither of them had been trying for a deep mind probe. But telepathy was all they had left, and it was warm and wonderful and it left them for an instant in the circle of each other’s arms, laughing, panting—with electricity flashing between them. Elena’s whole body felt as if she’d just gotten a sizable jolt.
Then she pulled herself out of his arms, but it was too late. Their shared gaze had gone on much too long, and Elena felt her heart pounding in fear. She could feel Damon’s eyes on her. She barely managed to whisper, “Will you tell them?”
“Yes,” Stefan said softly. “I’ll tell them.” But he didn’t move until she actually turned her back on Bonnie and Damon.
After that she peeked over her shoulder and listened.
Stefan sat down by the sobbing girl and said, “Bonnie, can you look at me? That’s all I want. I promise you, you don’t have to go across that bridge if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to stop crying, but try to look me in the eye. Can you do that? Good. Now…” His voice and even his face changed subtly, becoming more forceful—mesmerizing. “You’re not afraid of heights at all, are you? You’re an acrobat who could walk a tightrope across the Grand Canyon and never turn a hair. You’re the very best of all your family, the flying McCulloughs, and they’re the best in the world. And right now, you’re going to choose whether to cross over that wooden bridge. If so, you’ll lead us. You’ll be our leader.”
Slowly, while listening to Stefan, Bonnie’s face had changed. With swollen eyes fixed on Stefan’s, she seemed to be listening intently to something in her own head. And finally, as Stefan said the last sentence, she jumped up and looked at the bridge.
“Okay, let’s go!” she cried, picking up her backpack, while Elena sat staring after her.
“Can you make it?” Stefan asked, looking at Elena. “We’ll let her go first—there’s really no way she can fall off. I’ll go after her. Elena can come after me and hold on to my belt, and I’m counting on you, Damon, to hold on to her. Especially if she starts to faint.”
“I’ll hold her,” Damon said quietly. Elena wanted to ask Stefan to Influence her, too, but everything was happening so fast. Bonnie was already on the bridge, only pausing when called back by Stefan. Stefan was looking behind him at Elena, saying, “Can you get a good grip?” Damon was behind Elena, putting a strong hand on her shoulder, and saying, “Look straight ahead, not down. Don’t worry about fainting; I’ll catch you.”
But it was such a frail wooden bridge, and Elena found that she was always looking down and her stomach floated up outside her body and above her head. She had a death-grip on Stefan’s belt with one hand, and on the woven creeper with the other.
They came to a place where a slat had detached and the slats on either side looked as if they might go at any moment.
“Careful with these!” Bonnie said, laughing and leaping over all three.
Stefan stepped over the first chancy slat, over the missing one, and put his foot on the next.
Crack!
Elena didn’t scream—she was beyond screaming. She couldn’t look. The sound had shut her eyes.
And she couldn’t move. Not a finger. Certainly not a foot.
She felt Damon’s arms around her waist. Both of them. She wanted to let him support her weight as he had many times before.
But Damon was whispering to her, words like spells that allowed her legs to stop shaking and cramping and even let her stop breathing so fast that she might faint. And then he was lifting her and Stefan’s arms were going around her and for a moment they were both holding her firmly. Then Stefan took her weight and gently put her feet down on firm slats.
Elena wanted to cling to him like a koala, but she knew that she mustn’t. She would make them both fall. So somewhere, from inner depths she didn’t know she had, she found the courage to take her own weight on her feet and fumbled for the creeper.
Then she lifted her head and whispered as loudly as she could, “Go on. We need to give Damon room.”
“Yes,” Stefan whispered back. But he kissed her on the forehead, a quick protective kiss, before he turned and stepped toward the impatient Bonnie.
Behind her, Elena heard—and felt—Damon jumping catlike over the gap.
Elena raised her eyes to stare at the back of Stefan’s head again. She couldn’t compass all the emotions she was feeling at that moment: love, terror, awe, excitement—and, of course, gratitude, all at once.
She didn’t dare turn her head to look at Damon behind her, but she felt exactly the same things for him.
“A few more steps,” he kept saying. “A few more steps.”
A brief eternity later, they were on solid ground, facing a medium-sized cavern, and Elena fell to her knees. She was sick and faint, but she tried to thank Damon as he passed by her on the snowy mountain trail.
“You were in my way,” he said shortly and as coldly as the wind. “If you had fallen you might have upset the entire bridge. And I don’t happen to feel like dying today.”
“What are you saying to her? What did you just say?” Stefan, who had been out of earshot, came hurrying back. “What did he say to you?”
Damon, examining his palm for creeper thorns, said without looking up, “I told her the truth, that’s all. So far she’s zero for two on this quest. Let’s hope that as long as you make it through they let you in the Gatehouse, because if they’re grad
ing on performance we’ve flunked. Or should I say, one of us has flunked?”
“Shut up or I’ll shut you up,” Stefan said in a different voice than Elena had ever heard him use before. She stared. It was as if he’d grown ten years in one second. “Don’t you ever talk to her or about her that way again, Damon!”
Damon stared at him for a moment, pupils contracted. Then he said, “Whatever,” and strolled away.
Stefan bent down to hold Elena until her shaking stopped.
And that’s that, Elena thought. An ice-cold rage gripped her. Damon had no respect for her at all; he had none for anyone but himself. She couldn’t protect Bonnie from Bonnie’s own feelings—or stop him from insulting her. She couldn’t stop Bonnie for forgiving. But she, Elena, was done with Damon. This last insult was the end.
The fog came in again as they walked through the cavern.
32
“Damon doesn’t mean to be such a—a bastard,” Bonnie said explosively. “He’s just—so often he feels like it’s the three of us against him—and—and—”
“Well, who started that? Even back riding the thurgs,” Stefan said.
“I know, but there’s something else,” Bonnie said humbly. “Since it’s only snow and rock and ice—he’s—I don’t know. He’s all tight. Something’s wrong.”
“He’s hungry,” Elena said, stricken by a sudden realization. Since the thurgs there had been nothing for the two vampires to hunt. They couldn’t exist, like foxes, on insects and mice. Of course Lady Ulma had provided plenty of Black Magic for them, the only thing that even resembled a substitute for blood. But their supply was dwindling, and of course, they had to think of the trip back, as well.
Suddenly Elena knew what would do her good.
“Stefan,” she murmured, pulling him into a nook in the craggy stone of the cave entrance. She pushed off her hood and unrolled her scarf enough to expose one side of her neck. “Don’t make me say ‘please’ too many times,” she whispered to him. “I can’t wait that long.”
Stefan looked into her eyes, saw that she was serious—and determined—and kissed one of her mittened hands.
“It’s been long enough now, I think—no, I’m sure, or I would never even attempt this,” he whispered. Elena tipped her head back. Stefan stood between her and the wind and she was almost warm. She felt the little initial pain and then Stefan was drinking and their minds slid together like two raindrops on a glass window.
He took very little blood. Just enough to make the difference in his eyes between still green pools and sparkling, effervescent streams.
But then his gaze went still again. “Damon…” he said, and paused awkwardly.
What could Elena say? I just severed all ties with him? They were supposed to help one another along these trials; to show their wit and courage. If she refused, would she fail again?
“Send him quick then,” she said. “Before I change my mind.”
Five minutes later Elena was again tucked into the little nook, while Damon turned her head back and forth with dispassionate precision, then suddenly darted forward and sank his fangs into a prominent vein. Elena felt her eyes go wide.
A bite that hurt this much—well, she hadn’t experienced it since the days when she had been stupid and unprepared and had fought with all her strength to get free.
As for Damon’s mind—there was a steel wall. Since she had to do this, she had been hoping to see the little boy who lived in Damon’s inmost soul, the one who was the unwilling Watch-Keeper over all of his secrets, but she couldn’t even thaw the steel a little.
After a minute or two, Stefan pulled Damon off of her—not gently. Damon came away sullenly, wiping his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Bonnie asked in a worried whisper, as Elena rummaged through Lady Ulma’s medicine box for a piece of gauze to staunch the unhealed wounds in her neck.
“I’ve been better,” Elena said briefly, as she wrapped up her scarf again.
Bonnie sighed. “Meredith is the one who really belongs here,” she said.
“Yes, but Meredith really belongs in Fell’s Church, too. I only hope they can hold on long enough for us to come back.”
“I only hope that we can come back with something that will help them,” Bonnie whispered.
Meredith and Matt spent the time from 2:00 A.M. to dawn pouring infinitesimal drops from Misao’s star ball onto the streets of the town, and asking the Power to—somehow—help them in the fight against Shinichi. This brisk movement from place to place had also netted a surprising bonus: kids. Not crazy kids. Normal ones, terrified of their brothers and sisters or of their parents, not daring to go home because of the awful things they had seen there. Meredith and Matt had crammed them into Matt’s mother’s second-hand SUV and brought them to Matt’s house.
In the end, they had more than thirty kids, from ages five to sixteen, all too frightened to play, or talk, or even to ask for anything. But they’d eaten everything Mrs. Flowers could find that wasn’t spoiled in Matt’s refrigerator and pantry, and from the pantries of the deserted houses on either side of the Honeycutts’.
Matt, watching a ten-year-old girl cramming plain white bread into her mouth with wolfish hunger, tears running down her grimy face as she chewed and swallowed, said quietly to Meredith, “Think we’ve got any ringers in here?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” she replied just as quietly. “But what are we going to do? Cole doesn’t know anything helpful. We’ll just have to pray that the un-possessed kids will be able to help us when Shinichi’s ringers attack.”
“I think the best option when confronted by possessed kids who may have weapons is to run.”
Meredith nodded absently, but Matt noticed she took the stave everywhere with her now. “I’ve devised a little test for them. I’m going to smack every one with a Post-It, and see what happens. Kids who’ve done things they regret may get hysterical, kids who’re already just terrified may get some comfort, and the ringers will either attack or run.”
“This I have to see.”
Meredith’s test lured out only two ringers in the whole mob, a thirteen-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl. Each of them screamed and darted through the house, shrieking wildly. Matt couldn’t stop them. When it was all over and the older kids were comforting the younger ones, Matt and Meredith finished boarding up the windows and pasting amulets between the boards. They spent the evening scouting for food, questioning the kids about Shinichi and the Last Midnight, and helping Mrs. Flowers treat injuries. They tried to keep one person on guard at all times, but since they had been up and moving since 1:30 A.M., they were all very tired.
At a quarter to eleven Meredith came to Matt, who was cleaning the scratches of a yellow-haired eight-year-old. “Okay,” she said quietly, “I’m going to take my car and get the new amulets Mrs. Saitou said she’d have done by now. Do you mind if I take Saber?”
Matt shook his head. “No, I’ll do it. I know the Saitous better, anyway.”
Meredith gave what, in a less refined person, might have been called a snort. “I know them well enough to say, excuse me, Inari-Obaasan; excuse me, Orime-san; we’re the troublemakers who keep asking for huge amounts of anti-evil amulets, but you don’t mind that, do you?”
Matt smiled faintly, let the eight-year-old go, and said, “Well, they might mind it less if you got their names straight. ‘Obaasan’ means ‘grandma,’ right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And ‘san’ is just a thingy you put at the end of a name to be polite.”
Meredith nodded, adding, “And ‘a thingy at the end’ is called an ‘honorific suffix.’”
“Yeah, yeah, but for all your big words you’ve got their names wrong. It’s Orime-grandma and Orime-Isobel’s-mother. So Orime-Obaasan and Orime-san, too.”
Meredith sighed. “Look, Matt, Bonnie and I met them first. Grandma introduced herself as Inari. Now I know she’s a little wacky, but she would certainly know her own name, right?”
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“And she introduced herself to me and said not just that she was named Orime, but that her daughter was named after her. Talk your way out of that one.”
“Matt, shall I get my notebook? It’s in the boardinghouse den—”
Matt gave a short sharp laugh—almost a sob. He looked to make sure Mrs. Flowers wasn’t around and then hissed, “It’s somewhere down at the center of the earth, maybe. There is no den anymore.”
For a moment Meredith looked simply shocked, but then she frowned. Matt glared darkly. It didn’t help to think that they were the two most unlikely of their group to quarrel. Here they were, and Matt could practically see the sparks flying. “All right,” Meredith said finally, “I’ll just go over there and ask for Orime-Obaasan, and then tell them it was all your fault when they laugh.”
Matt shook his head. “Nobody’s going to laugh, because you’re going to get it right that way.”
“Look, Matt,” Meredith said, “I’ve been reading so much on the Internet that I even know the name Inari. I’ve come across it somewhere. And I’m sure I would have made…made the connection…” Her voice trailed off. When Matt turned his eyes down from the ceiling, he started. Meredith’s face was white and she was breathing quickly.
“Inari…” she whispered. “I do know that name, but…” Suddenly she grabbed Matt’s wrist so hard that it hurt. “Matt, is your computer absolutely dead?”
“It went when the electricity went. By now even the generator is gone.”
“But you have a mobile that connects to the Internet, right?”
The urgency in her voice made Matt, in turn, take her seriously. “Sure,” he said. “But the battery’s been kaput for at least a day. Without electricity I can’t recharge it. And my mom took hers. She can’t live without it. Stefan and Elena must’ve left their stuff at the boardinghouse—” He shook his head at Meredith’s hopeful expression and whispered, “Or, should I say, where the boardinghouse used to be.”
“But we have to find a mobile or computer that works! We have to! I need it to work for just a minute!” Meredith said frantically, breaking away from him and beginning to pace as if trying to beat some world record.
