The Return: Midnight tvd-7

by Лиза Джейн Смит

  Then Elena stepped back so that they formed a triangle around Shinichi.

  “Don’t even think of attacking,” Damon said pleasantly.

  Shinichi gave a weak shrug. “Attack you? Why bother? You’ll have nothing to go back to, even if I die. The children are pre-programmed to kill. But”—with sudden vehemence—“I wish we’d never come to your damned little town at all — and I wish we’d never followed Her orders. I wish I’d never let Misao near Her! I wish we hadn’t—” He stopped speaking suddenly. No, it was more than that, Elena thought.

  He froze, eyes wide open and staring. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that! I didn’t mean it! I have no regrets—” Elena had the feeling of something coming at them at tremendous speed, so fast, in fact, that she just had time to open her mouth before it hit Shinichi.

  Whatever it was, it killed him cleanly and passed by without touching anyone else.

  Shinichi fell facedown onto the dirt.

  “Don’t bother,” Elena said softly, as Stefan reflexively moved toward the corpse.

  “He’s dead. He did it to himself.”

  “But how?” Stefan and Damon demanded in chorus.

  “I’m not the expert,” Elena said. “Meredith is the expert on this. But she told me that kitsune could only be killed by destroying their star balls, shooting them with a blessed bullet…or by the ‘Sin of Regret.’ Meredith and I didn’t know what that meant back then — it was before we had even gone into the Dark Dimension. But I think we just now saw it in action.”

  “So you can’t be a kitsune and regret anything you’ve done? That’s — harsh,” Stefan said.

  “Not at all,” Damon said crisply. “Although, if it had operated for vampires, no doubt you would have been permanently dead when you woke up in the family vault.”

  “Earlier,” Stefan said expressionlessly. “I regreted striking you a mortal blow, even as I was dying. You’ve always said I feel too guilty, but that is one thing I would give my life to take back.”

  There was a silence that stretched and stretched. Damon was at the front of the group now, and no one but Bonnie could see his face.

  Suddenly Elena grabbed Stefan’s hand. “We still have a chance!” she told him.

  “Bonnie and I saw something bright that way! Let’s run!” He and Elena passed Damon running and he grabbed Bonnie’s hand too. “Like the wind, Bonnie!”

  “But with Shinichi dead — well, do we really have to find his star ball or the biggest star ball or whatever is hidden in this awful place?” Bonnie asked. Once, she would have whined, Elena thought. Now, despite whatever pain she felt, she was running.

  “We do have to find it, I’m afraid,” Stefan said. “Because from what he said, Shinichi wasn’t at the top of the ladder after all. He and his sister were working for someone, someone female. And whoever She is, She may be attacking Fell’s Church right now.”

  “The odds have just shifted,” Elena said. “We have an unknown enemy.”

  “But still—”

  “All bets,” Elena said, “are off.”

  36

  Matt broke a lot of traffic rules on the way to the Saitous’ street. Meredith leaned on the console between the two front seats so that she could see the digital clock ticking down to midnight, and so that she could watch the transformation of Mrs.

  Flowers. At last her recently sane, sensible mind forced words out of her mouth.

  “Mrs. Flowers — you’re changing.”

  “Yes, Meredith, dear. Some of it is due to the little present that Sage left for me.

  Some of it is my own will — to return to the days when I was in my prime. I believe that this will be my last fight, so I don’t mind using all my energy in it. Fell’s Church must be saved.”

  “But — Mrs. Flowers — the people here — well, they haven’t always been — exactly nice—” Matt stammered his way to a stop.

  “The people here are like people everywhere,” Mrs. Flowers said calmly. “Treat them as you’d like to be treated, and things will be fine. It was only when I’d let myself become a bitter, lonely old woman, always resentful of the fact that I had had to turn my home into a boardinghouse just to make ends meet, that people began to treat me — well, at best as a loony old hag.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Flowers — and we’ve been such a bother to you!” Meredith found the words coming without her volition.

  “You’ve been the saving of me, child. Dear Stefan was the start, but as you can imagine, he didn’t want to explain all his little differences to me, and I was suspicious of him. But he was always cordial and respectful and Elena was like sunlight, and Bonnie like laughter. Eventually, when I dropped my hidebound barriers, so did you young ones. I won’t say more about those who are present so as not to embarrass you, but you’ve done me a world of good.”

  Matt ran another stop sign and cleared his throat. Then, the steering wheel wavering slightly, he cleared his throat again.

  Meredith took over. “I think what Matt and I both want to say is…well, it’s that you’ve become very special to us, and we don’t want to see you get hurt. This battle—”

  “Is a battle for all I hold dear. For all my memories. Back when I was a child and the boardinghouse was built — it was just a home, then, and I was very happy. As a young woman, I was very happy. And now that I have lived long enough to be an old woman — well, besides you children, I still have friends like Sophia Alpert and Orime Saitou. They are both healing women, and very good at it. We still talk about different uses for my herbs.”

  Matt snapped his fingers. “That’s another reason I was confused,” he said.

  “Because Dr. Alpert said that you and Mrs. Saitou were such good people. I thought she meant the old Mrs. Saitou—”

  “Who is not a ‘Mrs. Saitou’ at all,” Mrs. Flowers said, almost sharply. “I have no idea what her name really is — perhaps she is really Inari, a deity gone bad. Ten years ago, I didn’t know what made Orime Saitou suddenly so diffident and quiet.

  Now I realize that it began just around the time her ‘mother’ moved in with her. I was quite fond of young Isobel, but she suddenly became — aloof — in an unchildlike way.

  Now I understand. And I am determined to fight for her — and for you — and for a town that is worth saving. Human lives are very, very precious. And now — here we are.”

  Matt had just turned onto the Saitous’ block. Meredith took a moment to openly stare at the figure in the front passenger seat. “Mrs. Flowers!” she exclaimed.

  This made Matt turn to stare in his turn and what he saw made him clip a Volkswagen Jetta parked by the sidewalk.

  “Mrs…. Flowers?”

  “Please park now, Matt. You needn’t call me Mrs. Flowers if you don’t want to. I have returned to the time when I was Theophilia — when my friends called me Theo.”

  “But — how — why—?” Matt stuttered.

  “I told you. I felt that it was time. Sage left me a gift that helped me change. An enemy beyond your powers to fight has arisen. I felt this back at the boardinghouse. This is the time that I have been waiting for. The last battle with the true enemy of Fell’s Church.”

  Meredith’s heart actually seemed ready to fly out of her chest. She had to be calm — calm and logical. She had seen magic many times. She knew the look of it, the feel of it. But frequently she had been too busy comforting Bonnie, or too worried about aiding Bonnie to take in what she was facing.

  Now, it was just her and Matt — and Matt had a stricken, stupefied look, as if he hadn’t seen enough magic before. As if he might crack.

  “Matt,” she said loudly, and then even louder, “Matt!” He turned, then, to look at her, with his blue eyes wild and dark.

  “They’ll kill her, Meredith!” he said. “Shinichi and Misao — you don’t know what it feels like…”

  “Come on,” Meredith said. “We have to make sure that it doesn’t kill her.”

  The dazed look passed from M
att’s eyes. “We have to do this,” he agreed simply.

  “Right,” said Meredith, finally releasing him. Together they got out of the car to stand by Mrs. Flowers — no, by Theo.

  Theo had hair that hung almost to her waist; so fair that it looked silver in the moonlight. Her face was — electrifying. It was young; young and proud, with classic features and a look of quiet determination.

  Somehow during the drive, her clothes had changed too. Instead of a coat covered with bits of paper, she was wearing a sleeveless white gown that ended in a slight train. In style, it reminded Meredith a little of the “mermaid” dress she herself had worn when going to a ball in the Dark Dimension. But Meredith’s dress had only made her look sultry. Theo looked…magnificent.

  As for the Post-it Note amulets…somehow the paper had disappeared and the writing had grown enormously, changing into very large scrawls that wrapped around the white gown. Theo was literally swathed in haute couture arcane protection.

  And although she was reed slender, she was tall. Taller than Meredith, taller than Matt, taller than Stefan, wherever he was in the Dark Dimensions. She was this tall not only because she had grown so much, but because the train of her dress was just brushing the ground. She had entirely overcome gravity. The whip, Sage’s present to her, was coiled into a circle attached to her waist, shining as silver as her hair.

  Matt and Meredith simultaneously closed the SUV’s doors. Matt left the engine running for a quick getaway.

  They walked around the garage so that they could see the front of the house.

  Meredith, not caring what she looked like or whether she seemed cool or in control, wiped her hands, one and then the other, on her jeans. This was the stave’s firstand possibly only — true battle. What counted was not appearance, but performance.

  Both she and Matt stopped dead when they saw the figure standing at the bottom of the steps in front of the porch. It was no one they could identify from the house.

  But then the crimson lips opened, the delicate hands flew up to cover them, and wind-chime laughter came from somewhere behind the hands.

  For a moment they could only stare, fascinated, at this woman who was dressed all in black. She was fully as tall as Theo, fully as slender and graceful, and she was floating equally high off the ground. But what Meredith and Matt were staring at was the fact that her hair was like Misao’s or Shinichi’s — but reversed. Whereas they had black hair with a crimson fringe on the bottom, this woman had crimson hairyards and yards of it, with a black fringe all around it. Not only that, but she had delicate black fox ears emerging from the crimson hair, and a long sleek crimson tail, tipped with black.

  “Obaasan?” Matt gasped in disbelief.

  “Inari!” Meredith snapped.

  The lovely creature didn’t even look at them. She was staring at Theo in contempt. “Tiny witch of a tiny town,” she said. “You’ve used nearly all your Power just to stand up to my level. What good are you?”

  “I have very small Powers,” Theo agreed. “But if the town is worthless, why has it taken you so long to destroy it? Why have you watched others try — or were they all your pawns, Inari? Katherine, Klaus, poor young Tyler — were they your pawns, Kitsune Goddess?”

  Inari laughed — still that chiming, girlish giggling, behind her fingers. “I don’t need pawns! Shinichi and Misao are my bond-servants, as all kitsune are! If I have left them some freedom, it has been so they can get experience. We’ll go on to larger cities now, and ravage them.”

  “You have to take Fell’s Church first,” Theo said steadily. “And I won’t let you do that.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? You are a human, with almost no Power left!

  Mine is the largest star ball in the worlds! I am a Goddess!”

  Theo lowered her head, then lifted it to look Inari in the eyes. “Do you want to know what I think the truth is, Inari?” she said. “I think that you have come to the end of a long, long, but not immortal life. I think you have dwindled so that at last you need to use a great deal of Power from your star ball — wherever it is — to appear this way. You are a very, very ancient woman and you have been setting children against their own parents, and parents against children across the world because you envy the children’s youth. You have even come to envy Shinichi and Misao, and let them be hurt, as revenge.”

  Matt and Meredith looked at each other with wide eyes. Inari was breathing rapidly, but it seemed she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You’ve even pretended to have entered a ‘second childhood’ to behave girlishly.

  But none of it satisfies you, because the plain, sad truth is that you have come to the end of your long, long lifetime — no matter how great your Power. We must all take that final journey, and it is your turn now.”

  “Liar!” shrieked Inari, looking for a moment more glorious — more radiant than before. But then Meredith saw why. Her scarlet hair had actually begun to smolder, framing her face in a dancing red light. And at last she spoke venemously.

  “Well, then, if you think this is my last battle, I must be sure to cause all the pain I can. Starting with you, witch.”

  Meredith and Matt both gasped. They were afraid for Theo, especially as Inari’s hair was braiding itself into thick ropes like serpents that floated around her head as if she were Medusa.

  The gasps were a mistake — they attracted Inari’s attention. But she didn’t move.

  She only said, “Smell that sweet scent on the wind? A roast sacrifice! I think the result will be oishii — delicious! But perhaps you two would like to speak to Orime or Isobel one last time. I’m afraid they can’t come out to see you.”

  Meredith’s heart was pounding violently in her throat, as she realized that the Saitous’ house was on fire. It seemed as if there were several small fires burning, but she was terrified at the implication that Inari had already done something to the mother and daughter.

  “No, Matt!” she cried, grabbing Matt’s arm. He would have charged straight at the laughing black-clad woman and tried to attack her feet — and seconds were invaluable now. “Come help me find them!”

  Theo came to their aid. Drawing up the white bullwhip, she whirled it once around her head and cracked it precisely on Inari’s raised hands, leaving a bloody gash on one. As a furious Inari turned back to her, Meredith and Matt ran.

  “The back door,” Matt said as they careered around the side of the house. Up ahead they saw a wooden fence, but no gate. Meredith was just considering using the stave to pole-vault, when Matt panted, “Here!” and made a cradle of his hands for her to step into. “I’ll boost you over!”

  Meredith hesitated only an instant. Then, as he skidded to a stop she jumped to place one foot in his inter-locked fingers. Suddenly she was flying upward. She made the most of it, landing, catlike, on the fence’s flat top, and then jumping down.

  She could hear Matt scrambling up the fence as she was suddenly surrounded by black smoke. She jumped backward three feet and yelled, “Matt, the smoke is dangerous! Get low; hold your breath. Stay outside to help them when I bring them out!”

  Meredith had no idea whether Matt would listen to her or not, but she obeyed her own rules, crouching low, breath held, opening her eyes briefly to try to find the door.

  Then she almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of an axe crashing into wood, of wood splintering, and of the axe crashing again. She opened her eyes and saw that Matt hadn’t listened to her, but she was glad because he’d found the door. His face was black with soot. “It was locked,” he explained, hefting the axe.

  Any optimism Meredith might have felt splintered like the door as she looked inside and saw only flames and more flames.

  My God, she thought, anyone in there is roasting, is probably dead already.

  But where had that thought come from? Her knowledge or her fear? Meredith couldn’t just stop now. She took a step into searing heat and shouted, “Isobel! Mrs.

  S
aitou! Where are you?”

  There was a weak, choking cry. “That’s the kitchen!” she said. “Matt, it’s Mrs.

  Saitou! Please go get her!”

  Matt obeyed, but threw over his shoulder, “Don’t you go farther in.”

  Meredith had to go farther in. She remembered very well where Isobel’s room was. Directly under her “grandmother’s.”

  “Isobel! Isobel! Can you hear me?” Her voice was so low and husky from smoke that she knew she had to keep going. Isobel might be unconscious or too hoarse to answer. Meredith dropped to her knees, crawling on the ground where the air was slightly cooler and more clear.

  Okay. Isobel’s room. She didn’t want to touch the door handle with her hand, so she wrapped her T-shirt around it. The handle wouldn’t turn. Locked. She didn’t bother to investigate how, she simply turned around and mule-kicked the door right beside the handle. Wood splintered. Another kick, and with a wooden scream the door swung free.

  Meredith was feeling dizzy now, but she needed to see the entire room. She took two strides in, and — there!

  Sitting up on the bed in the smoky, hot, but otherwise scrupulously tidy little room was Isobel. As Meredith neared the bed she saw — to her fury — that the girl was tied to the brass headboard with duct tape. Two slashes of the stave took care of that. Then, amazingly, Isobel moved, raising a blackened face up to Meredith’s.

  That was when Meredith’s fury peaked. The girl had duct tape across her mouth, to prevent her from making any cry for help. Wincing herself to show that she knew this was going to be painful, Meredith grasped the duct tape and stripped it off.

  Isobel didn’t cry out; instead she took in lungful after lungful of smoky air.

  Meredith stumbled toward the closet, snatched two identical-looking white shirts, and swerved back to Isobel. There was a full tumbler of water right beside her, on the nightstand. Meredith wondered if it had been put there deliberately to increase Isobel’s agony, but she didn’t hesitate to use it. She gave Isobel a quick sip, took one herself, and then soaked each shirt. She held one over her own mouth and Isobel mimicked her, holding the wet shirt over her nose and mouth. Then Meredith grabbed her and guided her back to the door.