The Return: Midnight tvd-7

by Лиза Джейн Смит

  Elena found herself looking down at her own hands, which were very clean but with broken nails and every knuckle bleeding. The outside world had become unreal again. She was inside herself, struggling with her grief, struggling with the knowledge that Idola, the central ruler of Guardians, hadn’t even mentioned before that they had looked for Damon’s spirit. And that it was…gone.

  Suddenly, the room was pressing in on her. There wasn’t enough air. There were only these women: these powerful, magical Guardian women; who still did not have enough power or magic to save Damon — or at least didn’t even care enough to try twice.

  She wasn’t sure what was happening to her. Her throat felt puffed out, her chest was both huge and tight. Each heartbeat sounded through her as if trying to shake her to death.

  To death. In her mind’s eye, she saw a hand hold up a glass of Clarion Loess Black Magic.

  And then, Elena knew that she had to stand a certain way, and hold her arms a certain way, and whisper certain words in her own mind. But the last, the naming of the spell, had only to be said aloud at the end.

  At the end — when things slowed. When green-eyed Idola — what a perfect name for someone who idolized herself, Elena thought — and fair businesslike Ryannen and nurturing Susurre — all stared at her with open mouths, too shocked to move even a finger as, quietly and calmly, Elena said, “Wings of Destruction—” It was a soldier, just an ordinary one of the rank and file, one of the dark women, who stopped it. She leaped up onto the dais, and, with inhuman speed, slapped her hand over Elena’s mouth, so that the final syllable was a mumble, and the golden, green, and blue hall did not explode into fragments with hot metal running in rivulets like lava, and the flower-fountain did not vaporize, and the stained-glass windows didn’t shatter into atoms.

  Then there were more arms around Elena, holding her down, scarcely letting her breathe, even when she went limp for lack of air. Elena fought like an animal, with her teeth and nails, to escape. But she eventually was completely restrained, pinned to the floor. She could hear Sage’s deep voice raging and Stefan, in between desperate telepathic bursts to her, pleading and explaining, “She’s still not in reality! She doesn’t even know what she’s doing!”

  But louder, she could hear the voices of the Guardians. “She would have killed us all!” “Those Wings — I’ve never seen anything so deadly!” “A human! And with just three words, she could have wiped us out!” “If Lenea hadn’t tackled her—” “Or if she had been another few feet away—” “She destroyed a moon, you know! No life on it at all now, and ashes still falling from the sky!” “That isn’t the point. The point is that she shouldn’t have Wings powers at all. She’s got to be clipped of them.”

  “That’s right — clip her Wings! Do it!”

  Elena recognized Ryannen’s and Idola’s voices at the end there. She was still trying to fight, but they held her so tightly and piled on her so ruthlessly that it had become a fight simply to get air and all she did was exhaust herself.

  And then they clipped her Wings. It was quick, at least, and Elena felt very little.

  What hurt most was her heart. Some proud, stubborn streak had been brought out with the fighting, and now she was ashamed to feel each pair cut off. First went Wings of Redemption, those great rainbow-hued arches. Then Wings of Purification, white and iridescent as frosted cobwebs. Wings of the Wind, like honey-colored thistledown. Wings of Remembrance, soft violet and midnight blue.

  And then Wings of Protection — emerald green and gold, the Wings that had saved her friends from Bloddeuwedd’s frenzied attack on them the first time they had entered the Dark Dimensions.

  And, finally, Wings of Destruction — high, ebony arches with edges as delicate as black lace.

  Elena tried to keep silent as each power was taken. But after the first one or two had fallen at her sides, in shadows that perhaps only she could see, she heard a small gasp, and realized that it was her own voice. And with the next cut, an involuntary little cry.

  For a moment there was silence. And then suddenly there was overwhelming noise. Elena could hear Bonnie keening and Sage roaring, and Stefan, gentle Stefan, shouting blasphemies and curses at the Guardians. Elena guessed from the stifled sound of his voice that he was fighting them, fighting to get to her.

  He reached her, somehow, just as the deadly, delicate Wings of Destruction were sheared from her shoulders and mind, and fell like tall shadows to the ground.

  It was good that he did reach her then, because at last, when Elena was the least dangerous she had been since the Powers of Wings had begun awakening in her, suddenly the Guardians seemed afraid. They stepped back from her, these strong and dangerous women, and only Stefan was there to catch her and hold her in his arms.

  Stunned, dazed, she was an eighteen-year-old girl who was ordinary. Except for her blood. They wanted to rob her of her blood as well…to “purify” it. The three rulers and their attendants had already gathered in a determined, multihued triangle around her and were working their magic when Sage bellowed, “Stop!”

  Elena, drooping over Stefan’s shoulder, could see him vaguely, his velvety black wings still spread from wall to wall, still touching the golden ceiling. Bonnie clung to him like a bit of stray dandelion fluff. “You have already diminished her aura to almost nothing,” he growled. “If you ‘purify’ the blood of this pauvre petite completely, she will die — and then she will awaken. You will have created un vampire, Mesdames. Is that what you wish?”

  Susurre reeled back. For the ruler of such a harsh and unyielding realm, she seemed almost too gentle — but not too soft to shear off my Wings, Elena thought, wriggling her shoulders to ease them. Maybe she didn’t know how much it would hurt, another part of her mind offered vaguely.

  Then all her mind came together in an emergency meeting. Something warm and cooling was sliding down the back of her neck, in tiny droplets. Not blood. No, this was infinitely more precious than what the Guardians had taken away. Stefan’s tears.

  She rocked hard, trying to take her own weight on her feet. Somehow, shakily, she managed it. She only realized just how shaky she was when she tried to lift a hand and wipe the tears off Stefan’s cheeks with her thumb. Her whole hand wobbled as if she were making a childish joke. Her thumb struck his cheek with enough force to make anyone else wince. She looked at him with dumb apology, too shocked to try to speak.

  Stefan was speaking. Over and over. “It doesn’t matter,” he was saying. “It’s all right, love. Oh, lovely love, it will be all right.” He wiped her eyes with a hand that was rock steady, and all the time he was looking only at her, and — she knewthinking only of her.

  She knew that because she also knew the moment when it changed.

  Red hair was in her line of sight, blurred through new tears. Red hair and narrow green eyes, too close to her. That was when Elena felt Stefan remember that there was anything other than Elena in the world.

  His face changed. He didn’t snarl or stick out his chin. The change was an entire alteration, but it centered around his eyes, which became deadly hard while everything else became sharp and fierce.

  “If you touch her again, you vicious bitch, I will rip out your throat,” Stefan said, and each word was like a chip of ice-cold iron dropped onto the floor.

  Elena’s tears stopped with the shock of it. Stefan didn’t talk that way to women.

  Even Damon didn’t — hadn’t. But the words were still echoing in the sudden silence of the cathedral-like room. People were backing away.

  Idola was backing away too, but her lip was curled. “Do you think that because we are Guardians that we cannot harm you—?” she was beginning, when Stefan’s voice cut through hers cleanly.

  “I think that because you are ‘Guardians’ you can kill sanctimoniously and get away with it,” Stefan said, and his lip made a far more compelling — and frightening — line of scorn than Idola’s had. “You would have killed Elena if Sage hadn’t stopped you. Damn you,” he
added softly, but with such utter conviction that Idola took another step backward. “Yes, you’d better rally all your little friends around,” he added. “I might just decide to kill you anyway. I killed my own brother, as I’m sure you realize.”

  “But surely — that was only after taking a mortal blow yourself.” Susurre was between the two of them, trying to intercede.

  Stefan shrugged. He looked at her with the same contempt as he had the other ruler. “I still had the use of my arm,” he said deliberately. “I could have decided to drop my sword, or to merely wound him. Instead I chose to put a blade straight through his heart.” He showed his teeth in a distinctly unfriendly smile. “And now I don’t even need a weapon.”

  “Stefan,” Elena managed at last to whisper.

  “I know. She’s weaker than I am and you don’t want to see me kill her. That’s why she’s still alive, love. It’s the only reason.” As Elena lifted half-frightened eyes to him, Stefan added in a voice only she could hear, Of course, there are some things about me you don’t know, Elena. Things I’d hoped you’d never have to see. Knowing you — loving you — made me almost forget about them.

  Stefan’s voice in her head woke something inside Elena. She lifted her head and looked at the blurry mass of Guardians around them. She saw strawberry-blond curls suspended in midair. Bonnie. Bonnie fighting. Doing it weakly, but only because a pair of the fair Guardians and another pair of dark ones were holding her in the air, one to each limb. As Elena stared at her she seemed to regain energy and fought harder. And Elena could hear…something. It was faint and far away, but it almost sounded like…her name. Like her name spoken by whispering branches or the whirring of passing bicycle wheels. lay…nah…eee…lay…

  Elena reached inwardly for the sound. She tried desperately to grasp whatever came after, but nothing happened. She tried a trick she would have found easy yesterday — channeling Power to the center of her telepathy. It didn’t work. She tried her telepathy.

  Bonnie! Can you hear me?

  There wasn’t even the slightest change in the smaller girl’s expression.

  Elena had lost her link to Bonnie.

  She watched as Bonnie realized the same thing, watched the fight go out of the small body. Bonnie’s face, upturned in blank despair, was indescribably sad, and somehow indescribably pure and beautiful, all at once.

  That will never happen to us, Stefan’s voice in her mind told her fiercely. Never!

  I give you my No! Elena thought back, superstitiously terrified of a jinx. If Stefan swore, something might happen — she might have to become a vampire or a spirit — to ensure that he didn’t break his word.

  He stopped, and Elena knew that he had heard her. And somehow this knowledge, that Stefan had heard a single word from her, stilled her. She knew he wasn’t spying. He’d heard because she’d sent the thought to him. She wasn’t alone.

  She might be ordinary again; they might have taken her wings and most of the Power of her blood, but she wasn’t alone. She leaned toward him, her forehead against Stefan’s chin.

  “No one is alone.” She’d told Damon that. Damon Salvatore, a being who no longer existed. But who still called forth from her one more word, one final cry. His name.

  Damon!

  He’d died four dimensions away. But she could feel Stefan backing her, amplifying her transmission, sending it like one last beacon through the multitude of worlds that separated them from his cold and lifeless body.

  Damon!

  There wasn’t the slightest glimmer of an answer. Of course not. Elena was making a fool of herself.

  Suddenly something stronger than grief, stronger than self-pity, even stronger than guilt, took hold of her. Damon wouldn’t have wanted her to be carried out of this hall — even by Stefan. Especially by Stefan. He would have wanted her to show no sign of weakness to these women who’d shorn her and humiliated her.

  Yes. That was Stefan. Her love, but not her lover, willing to love her chastely from now until the end of her days….

  The end…of her days?

  Elena was suddenly glad that she couldn’t project to strangers telepathically and that Stefan had set shields around them when he’d taken her into his arms. She turned to Ryannen, who was watching…warily, but still with business in her eyes.

  “I’d like to go now, if you don’t mind,” she said, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder with a gesture as arrogant as she could make it. There was a bolt of agony as the weight of the strap hit the place from which most of her wings had sprung, but she kept her face contemptuous and indifferent.

  Bonnie, back on the ground since she wasn’t fighting any longer, followed Elena’s lead. Stefan had left his backpack in the Gatehouse, but he gently cupped a hand around Elena’s elbow, not guiding her, but showing that he was there for her.

  Sage’s wings folded back into themselves and were gone.

  “You understand that for the return of these treasures which are ours by right but which we were barred from retrieving — you will be granted your requests with the exception of the imposs—”

  “I understand,” Elena said flatly, just as Stefan said, much more brusquely, “She understands. Just do it, will you?”

  “It is already being organized.” Ryannen’s eyes, dark blue splashed with gold, met Elena’s with a look not entirely unsympathetic.

  “The best thing,” Sussure added hastily, “would be for us to put you to sleep and send you to your — your old, new dwellings. By the time you awaken, all will have been accomplished.”

  Elena forced her face not to change. “Send me to Maple Street?” she asked, looking at Ryannen. “Aunt Judith’s house?”

  “In your sleep, yes.”

  “I don’t want to be asleep.” Elena moved even closer to Stefan. “Don’t let them put me to sleep!”

  “No one’s going to do anything to you that you don’t want,” Stefan said, and his voice was like the edge of a razor. Sage rumbled his support, and Bonnie stared at the fair woman hard.

  Ryannen bowed her head.

  Elena woke up.

  It was dark, and she’d been asleep. She couldn’t remember exactly how she’d fallen asleep, but she knew she wasn’t on the palanquin, and she knew she wasn’t in a sleeping bag.

  Stefan? Bonnie? Damon? she thought automatically, but there was something odd about her telepathy. It felt almost as if it were confined to her own head.

  Was she in Stefan’s room? It must be pitch-black outside, since she couldn’t even see the outline of the trapdoor that led to the widow’s walk.

  “Stefan?” she whispered, while various bits of information pooled in her mind.

  There was a smell, at once familiar and unfamiliar. She was lying on a comfortable double bed, not one of Lady Ulma’s silken-and-velvet extravaganzas, but not any lumpy featherbed from the boardinghouse, either. Was she in a hotel?

  As these various thoughts came together in her brain, there was a soft quick rapping. Knuckles on glass.

  Elena’s body took over. She tossed off the bedspread and ran to the window, mysteriously avoiding obstacles without thinking about them at all. Her hands wrenched aside curtains that she somehow knew were there and her skyrocketing heart brought a name to her lips.

  “Da—!”

  And then the world stopped and did its slowest somersault of all. The sight of a face, fierce and concerned and loving and yet strangely frustrated, just on the other side of the second-story window, brought Elena’s memories back.

  All of them.

  Fell’s Church was saved.

  And Damon was dead.

  Her head bent slowly until her forehead touched the cool pane of glass.

  43

  “Elena?” Stefan said quietly. “Could you ask me to come in? You have to invite me in if you want to — to talk—” Invite him in? He was already in — inside her heart. She had told the Guardians that everyone would have to accept Stefan as her boyfriend of almost a year.<
br />
  It didn’t matter. In a low voice she said, “Come in, Stefan.”

  “The window’s locked from your side, Elena.”

  Numbly, Elena unlocked the window. The next moment she was encompassed by warm, strong arms in a desperate, fervent embrace. But the moment after that, the arms dropped, leaving her frozen and lonely.

  “Stefan? What’s wrong?” Her eyes had adapted and by the starlight through the window she could see him hesitating before her.

  “I can’t — It isn’t — It’s not me you want,” he said in a rush that sounded as if it came through a constricted throat. “But I wanted you to know that — that Meredith and Matt are holding Bonnie. Comforting her, I mean. They’re all okay and so is Mrs. Flowers. And I thought that you—”

  “They put me to sleep! They said they wouldn’t put me to sleep!”

  “You fell asleep, lo — Elena. While we were waiting for them to send us home. We all watched over you: Bonnie, Sage, and I.” He was still speaking in that formal, unusual tone. “But I thought — well, that you might want to talk tonight, too. Before I–I left.” He put a finger up to stop his lip from shaking.

  “You swore you wouldn’t leave me!” Elena cried. “You promised, not for any reason, not for any length of time, no matter how noble the cause!”

  “But — Elena — that was before I understood…”

  “You still don’t understand! Do you know—” His hand flew to cover her mouth and he put his lips to her ear. “Lo — Elena.

  We’re in your house. Your aunt—” Elena felt her eyes widen, although of course subconsciously she had known this all along. The air of familiarity. This bed — it was her bed, and the spread was her beloved gold and white bedspread. The obstacles she’d known how to avoid in the dark — the tapping at her window…she was home.

  Like a climber who has negotiated an impossible-seeming section of rock, and almost fallen, Elena felt a tremendous rush of adrenaline. And it was this — or, perhaps, simply the power of the love that flooded through her — that achieved what she had been so clumsily trying to reach. She felt her soul expand and come out of her body. And meet Stefan’s.