The Return: Midnight tvd-7

by Лиза Джейн Смит

  “Here.” He stripped off the damp fur and wrapped a warm, dry one around her, over her camisole.

  After a moment or two she began to shiver.

  “That’s my girl,” Damon’s voice said. It went on: “Don’t fight me, Elena. I’m trying to save your life. That’s all. I’m not going to try to do anything else. I give you my word.”

  Elena was bewildered. Why should she think that Damon — this must be Damon, she decided — would want to hurt her?

  Although he could be a bastard sometimes…

  And he was taking off her clothes.

  No. That shouldn’t be happening. Definitely not. Especially since Stefan must be somewhere around.

  But by now Elena was shivering too hard to talk.

  And now that she was in her underwear, he was making her lie down on furs, tucking other furs around her. Elena didn’t understand anything that was happening, but it was all starting not to matter. She was floating somewhere outside herself, watching without much interest.

  Then another body was slipping in under the furs. She snapped back from the place she had been floating. Very briefly she got a look at a bare chest. And then a warm, compact body slid into the makeshift sleeping bag with her. Warm, hard arms went around her, keeping her in contact all over her body.

  Through the mist she vaguely heard Stefan’s voice.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  30

  “Strip to your underwear and get in on the other side,” Damon said. His voice was neither angry nor fatuous. He added shortly, “Elena is dying.”

  The last three words seemed to affect Stefan particularly, although Elena couldn’t parse them. Stefan wasn’t moving, just breathing hard, his eyes wide.

  “Bonnie and I have been gathering hay and fuel and we’re all right.”

  “You’ve been exercising — moving about — wearing clothes that kept you warm.

  She’s been dunked in ice water and sitting still — high up in the wind. I got the other thurg to break off wood from the dead trees around here and try it on the fire. Now get the hell in, Stefan, and give her some body warmth, or I’m going to make her a vampire.”

  “Nnn,” Elena tried to say, but Stefan didn’t seem to understand.

  Damon, however, said, “Don’t worry. He’s going to warm you up from the other side. You won’t have to become a vampire just yet. For God’s sake,” he added suddenly, explosively, “some prince you picked!”

  Stefan’s voice was quiet and tense. “You tried putting her in a thermal envelope?”

  “Of course I tried, you idiot! No magic works beyond the Mirror except telepathy.”

  Elena had no sense of time going by, but suddenly there was a familiar body pressed against hers from the other side.

  And somewhere directly in her mind: Elena? Elena? You’re all right, aren’t you, Elena? I don’t care whether you’re playing a joke on me. But you’re really all right, aren’t you? Just tell me that, love.

  Elena wasn’t able to answer at all.

  Dimly, fragments of sound came to her ears: “Bonnie…on top of her and…pack ourselves back on either side.”

  And dull feelings stirred her sense of touch: a small body, almost weightless, like a thick blanket, pressing down on her. Someone sobbing, tears dripping on her neck from above. And warmth on either side.

  I’m asleep with the other kittens, she thought, dozing. Maybe we’ll have a nice dream.

  “I wish we could know how they’re doing,” Meredith said, on a pause from one of her pacing bouts.

  “I wish they knew how we’re doing,” Matt said wearily as he taped another note card amulet onto a window. And another.

  “Do you know, my dears, I kept hearing a child crying last night in my dreams,” Mrs. Flowers said slowly.

  Meredith turned, startled. “So did I! Right out on the front porch, it sounded like.

  But I was too tired to get up.”

  “It might mean something — or nothing at all.” Mrs. Flowers frowned. She was boiling tap water for tea. The electricity was sporadic. Matt and Saber had driven back to the boardinghouse earlier that day so that Matt could gather Mrs. Flowers’s most important instruments — her herbs for teas, compresses, and poultices. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her about the state of the boardinghouse, or what those maggot malach had done to it. He’d had to find a loose board from the garage to get from the hall to the kitchen. There was no third floor anymore and very little second.

  At least he hadn’t run into Shinichi.

  “What I’m saying is that maybe there’s some real kid out there,” Meredith said.

  “At night alone? Sounds like a Shinichi zombie,” Matt said.

  “Maybe. But maybe not. Mrs. Flowers, do you have any idea of when you hear the crying? Early in the night or late?”

  “Let me think, dear. It seems to me that I hear it whenever I wake up — and old people wake up quite frequently.”

  “I usually hear it toward the morning — but I usually sleep without dreaming for the first few hours and wake up early.”

  Mrs. Flowers turned to Matt. “What about you, Matt, dear? Do you ever hear a sound like crying?”

  Matt, who deliberately overworked himself these days to try to get a solid six hours of sleep at night, said, “I’ve heard the wind kind of moaning and sobbing around midnight, I guess.”

  “It sounds as if we have an all-night ghost, my dears,” Mrs. Flowers said calmly and poured them each a mug of tea.

  Matt saw Meredith glance at him uneasily — but Meredith didn’t know Mrs.

  Flowers as well as he did.

  “You don’t really think it’s a ghost,” he said now.

  “No, I don’t. Mama hasn’t said a word about it, and then it’s your house, Matt, dear. No gruesome murders or hideous secrets in its past, I should think. Let me see…” She shut her eyes and let Matt and Meredith go on with their tea. Then she opened her eyes and gave them a puzzled smile.

  “Mama says ‘search the house for your ghost. Then listen well to what it has to say.’”

  “Okay,” Matt said poker-faced. “Since it’s my house, I guess I’d better search for it. But when? Should I set an alarm?”

  “I think the best way would be to arrange a watch rota,” Mrs. Flowers said.

  “Okay,” Meredith agreed promptly. “I’ll take the middle watch, from midnight to four; Matt can have the first one; and Mrs. Flowers, you can have the earlymorning one, and get a nap in the afternoon if you want.”

  Matt felt uneasy. “Why don’t we just break it up into two watches and the two of you can share one? I’ll take the other.”

  “Because, dear Matt,” Meredith said, “we don’t want to be treated like ‘ladies.’ And don’t argue”—she hefted the fighting stave—“because I’m the one with the heavy equipment.”

  Something was shaking the room. Shaking Matt with it. Still half-asleep, he put his hand under his pillow and pulled out the revolver. A hand grabbed it and he heard a voice.

  “Matt! It’s me, Meredith! Wake up, will you?”

  Groggily, Matt reached for the lamp switch. Again, strong, slim cold fingers prevented him from doing what he wanted.

  “No light,” Meredith whispered. “It’s very faint, but if you come with me quietly, you can hear it. The crying.”

  That woke Matt up the rest of the way. “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  Doing his best to walk quietly through the dark halls, Matt followed Meredith to the downstairs living room.

  “Sh!” Meredith warned. “Listen.”

  Matt listened. He could hear some sobbing all right, and maybe some words, but they didn’t sound all that ghostly to him. He put his ear to the wall and listened. The crying was louder.

  “Do we have a flashlight?” Matt asked.

  “I have two, my dears. But this is a very dangerous time of night.” Mrs. Flowers was a shadow against darkness.

  “Please give the flas
hlights to us,” said Matt. “I don’t think our ghost is very supernatural. What time is it, anyway?”

  “About twelve forty A.M.,” Meredith answered. “But why do you think it isn’t supernatural?”

  “Because I think it’s living in our basement,” Matt said. “I think it’s Cole Reece.

  The kid who ate his guinea pig.”

  Ten minutes later, with the stave, two flashlights, and Saber, they had caught their ghost.

  “I didn’t mean anything bad,” Cole sobbed, when they had lured him upstairs with promises of candy and “magic” tea that would let him sleep.

  “I didn’t hurt anything, honest,” he choked, wolfing down Hershey bar after Hershey bar from their emergency rations. “I’m scared that he’s onto me. Because after you hit me with that sticky note, I haven’t been able to hear him in my head anymore. And then you came here”—he gestured around Matt’s house—“and you had amulets and I figured it would be better to stay inside them. Or it could be my Last Midnight too.”

  He was babbling. But something about the last words made Matt say, “What do you mean…‘your Last Midnight too’?”

  Cole looked at him in terror. The rim of melted Hershey bar around his lips made Matt remember the last time he’d seen the boy.

  “You know, don’t you?” Cole faltered. “About the midnights? The countdown?

  Twelve days till the Last Midnight? Eleven days till the Last Midnight? And now… tonight is one day till the Last Midnight…” He began to sob again, even while cramming chocolate into his mouth. It was clear that he was starving.

  “But what happens on the Last Midnight?” Meredith asked.

  “You know, don’t you? That that’s the time when…you know.” Maddeningly Cole seemed to think they were testing him.

  Matt put his hands on Cole’s shoulders, and to his horror felt bones under his fingers. The kid really was starving, he thought, forgiving him all the Hershey bars.

  His eyes met Mrs. Flowers’s eyes and she immediately went to the kitchen.

  But Cole wasn’t answering; he was mumbling incoherently. Matt forced himself to apply pressure to those bony shoulders.

  “Cole, talk louder! What’s this Last Midnight about?”

  “You know. That’s when…all the kids…you know, they wait up and at midnight… they get knives or guns. You know. And we go into our parents’ room while they’re asleep and…” Cole broke down again, but Matt noticed he had slipped into saying

  “we” and “our” by the end.

  Meredith spoke in her calm, steady voice. “The children are going to kill their parents, is that right?”

  “He showed us where to slash or stab. Or if there’s a gun—” Matt had heard enough. “You can stay — in the basement,” he said. “And here are some amulets. Put them on you if you feel like you’re in danger.” He gave Cole a whole packet of Post-it Notes.

  “Just don’t be afraid,” Meredith added, as Mrs. Flowers came in with a plate of sausages and fried potatoes for Cole. At any other time the smell would have made Matt hungry.

  “It’s just like that island in Japan,” he said. “Shinichi and Misao made it happen there, and they’re going to do it again.”

  “I say time’s running out. Actually it’s already the Last Midnight day — it’s nearly one thirty in the morning,” Meredith said. “We have less than twenty-four hours.

  We should either get out of Fell’s Church or do something to arrange a confrontation.”

  “A confrontation? Without Elena or Damon or Stefan?” Matt said. “We’ll be murdered. Don’t forget Sheriff Mossberg.”

  “He didn’t have this.” Meredith tossed the fighting stave into the air, caught it neatly, and put it at her side.

  Matt shook his head. “Shinichi will still kill you. Or some little kid will, with the semiautomatic from Daddy’s closet.”

  “We have to do something.”

  Matt thought. His head was pounding. Finally he said, head lowered, “When I got the herbs I got Misao’s star ball, too.”

  “You’re kidding. Shinichi still didn’t find it?”

  “No. And maybe we could do something with it.”

  Matt looked at Meredith, who looked at Mrs. Flowers. Mrs. Flowers said, “What about pouring out the liquid in different places in Fell’s Church? Just a drop here and a drop there? We could ask the Power in it to protect the town. Maybe it would listen.”

  Meredith said, “That was the exact reason we wanted to get Shinichi’s and Misao’s star balls in the first place. The star balls control their owners, according to legend.”

  Matt said, “It may be old-ways thinking, but I agree.”

  Meredith said, “Then let’s do it right now.”

  While the other two waited, Matt got Misao’s star ball. It had a very, very little liquid on the bottom.

  “After the Last Midnight she plans to fill it to the top with the energy of the new lives that get taken,” Meredith said.

  “Well, she’s not going to get a chance to do that,” Matt said flatly. “When we’re done we’ll destroy the container.”

  “But we probably should hurry,” Meredith added. “Let’s get some weapons together: something silver, something long and heavy, like a fire iron. Shinichi’s little zombies are not going to be happy — and who knows who’s on his side?”

  31

  Elena woke up feeling stiff and cramped. But that wasn’t surprising. Three other people seemed to be on top of her.

  Elena? Can you hear me?

  Stefan?

  Yes! You’re awake?

  I’m all cramped…and hot.

  A different voice interrupted. Just give us a moment and you won’t be cramped anymore. Elena felt Damon move away. Bonnie rolled into his place.

  But Stefan clung to her for a moment. Elena, I’m sorry. I never even realized what condition you were in. Thank God for Damon. Can you forgive me?

  Despite the heat, Elena cuddled closer to him. If you can forgive me for putting the whole party in danger. I did that, didn’t I?

  I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that I love you.

  It was several minutes before Bonnie woke up. Then she said feebly, “Hey!

  Whachoo doin’ in my bed?”

  “Getting out of it,” Elena said, and tried to roll over and get up. The world was wobbly. She was wobbly — and bruised. But Stefan was never more than a few inches away, holding her, righting her when she started to fall. He helped her get dressed without making her feel like a baby. He examined her backpack, which fortunately hadn’t gone into the water, and then he took out anything heavy inside.

  He put the heavy things in his own pack.

  Elena felt much better after being given some food, and after seeing the thurgsboth of them — eating too; either stretching their great double trunks up to break off pieces of wood from the barren trees, or scooping away snow to find dry grass underneath. They clearly were not going to die after all.

  Elena knew everyone was watching her to gauge whether or not she was up to any more that day. She hurried to finish drinking the tea heated over a dung fire, trying to conceal the fact that her hands shook. After forcing some jerky down, she said in her most cheerful voice, “So what next?”

  How do you feel? Stefan asked her.

  “Little sore, but I’ll be fine. I guess everyone expects me to have pneumonia, but I don’t even have any cough.”

  Damon, after one heavy-lidded glance at Stefan, took both her hands and stared at her. She couldn’t — she didn’t dare — meet his eyes, so she focused on Stefan, who was looking at her comfortingly.

  At last Damon dropped Elena’s hands abruptly. “I went in as far as I could. You should know how far that is,” he added to Stefan. “She’s sound, her nose is wet, and her coat is shiny.”

  Stefan looked as if he were going to smack him one, but Elena took his hand soothingly. “I’m healthy,” she said. “So that’s two votes for me going on to save Fell’s Chu
rch.”

  “I’ve always believed in you,” Stefan said. “If you think you can go on, you can go on.”

  Bonnie sniffled. “Just don’t take any more chances, okay?” she said. “You scared me.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Elena said gently, feeling the void of Meredith’s absence.

  Meredith would be a great help to both of them now. “So, shall we continue? And where are we heading? I’m all turned around.”

  Damon stood. “I think we just keep in a straight line. The path is narrow after this — and who knows what the next trial is?”

  The path was narrow — and misty. Just as before, it started in filmy veils and ended up blinding them. Elena let Stefan, with his catlike reflexes, go first, and she held on to his pack. Behind her, Bonnie clung like a burr. Just when Elena thought she was going to scream if she had to keep traveling through the white blanket any farther, it cleared.

  They were near the top of some mountain.

  Elena took off after Bonnie, who had hurried ahead at the sight of transparent air. She was just fast enough to grab on to Bonnie’s pack and pull her backward as she reached the place where the land stopped.

  “No way!” Bonnie cried, setting up a clamoring echo from below. “There is no way I’m going across that!”

  That was a chasm with a very thin bridge spanning it.

  The chasm was frosty white on either side at the top, but when Elena gripped the bridge’s ice-cold metal poles and leaned a little forward she could see glacial blues and greens at the very bottom. A chill wind hit her face.

  The gap between this bit of the world and the next bit directly in front of them was about a hundred yards long.

  Elena looked from the shadowy depths to the slender bridge, which was made of wooden slats and just wide enough for one person to walk on. It was supported here and there by ropes which ran to the sides of the chasm and were sunk with metal posts into barren, icy rock.

  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, creeperwoven rope to hold on to on the left.