by Smith, L. J.
Elena’s hands were trembling as she took out the outfit Lady Ulma had created. It was quite as decent as a bathing suit, but it looked like jewelry strategically placed on wisps of golden tulle. It all coordinated with the canary diamond: from the necklace to the armlets to the golden bracelets that denoted that, however expensively Elena was dressed, she was still a slave.
And that was it. She was going clad in tulle and jewelry, perfume and paint, to see her Stefan. Elena put the scarlet cloak on very, very carefully to avoid rumpling or smearing anything below, and slipped her feet into delicate golden sandals with very high heels.
She hurried downstairs and was exactly on time. Sage and Damon were wearing cloaks tightly closed—which meant that they were dressed in the sacking outfits underneath. Sage had had Lady Ulma’s coach made ready. Elena settled her matching golden bracelets on her wrists, hating them because she had to wear them, pretty as they were against the white fur trim on her scarlet cloak. Damon held out a hand to help her into the coach.
“I get to ride inside? Does that mean I don’t have to wear—” But looking at Sage, her hopes were crushed.
“Unless we want to curtain all the windows,” he said, “you’re legally traveling outside without slave bracelets.”
Elena sighed and gave her hand to Damon. Standing against the sun, he was a dark silhouette. But then, as Elena blinked in the light, he stared in astonishment. Elena knew he’d seen her gilded eyelids. His eyes dropped to her pursed-to-be-kissed lips. Elena blushed.
“I forbid you to order me to show you what’s under the cloak,” she said hastily. Damon looked thwarted.
“Hair in tiny curls all over your forehead, cloak that covers everything from neck to toes, lipstick like…” He stared again. His mouth twitched as if he were being compelled to fit it to hers.
“And it’s time to go!” Elena caroled, hastily getting into the carriage. She felt very happy, although she understood why freed slaves would never wear anything like a bracelet again.
She was still happy when they reached the Shi no Shi—that large building that seemed to combine a prison with a training facility for gladiators.
And she was still happy as the guards at the large Shi no Shi checkpoint let them into the building without showing any signs of ill feeling. But then, it was hard to say if the cloak had any effect on them. They were demons: sullen, mauve-skinned, bullock-steady.
She noticed something that was at first a shock and then a river of hope inside her. The front lobby of the building had a door in one side that was like the door in the side of the depot/slaveshop: always kept shut; strange symbols above; people walking up to it in different costumes and announcing a destination before turning the key and opening the door.
In other words: a dimensional door. Right here in Stefan’s prison. God alone knew how many guards would be after them if they tried to use it, but it was something to keep in mind.
The guards on the lower floors of the Shi no Shi building, in what was most definitely a dungeon, had clear and obnoxious reactions to Elena and her party. They were some smaller species of demon—imps, maybe, Elena thought—and they gave the visitors a hard time over everything. Damon had to bribe them to be allowed in to the area where Stefan’s cell was, to go in alone, without one guard per visitor, and to allow Elena, a slave, to go in to see a free vampire.
And even when Damon had given them a small fortune to get past these obstacles, they sniggered and made harsh guttural gurglings in their throats. Elena didn’t trust them.
She was correct.
At a corridor where Elena knew from her out of body experiences they should have turned left, instead they went straight through. They passed another set of guards, who almost collapsed from sniggering.
Oh—God—are they taking us to see Stefan’s dead body? Elena wondered suddenly. Then it was Sage who really helped her. He put out a large arm and bodily held her up, until she found her legs again.
They went on walking, deeper into what was a filthy and stinking stone-floored dungeon now. Then abruptly they turned right.
Elena’s heart raced on before them. It was saying wrong, wrong, wrong, even before they got to the last cell in the line. The cell was completely different from Stefan’s old cell. It was surrounded, not by bars, but by a sort of curlicued chicken wire that was lined with sharp spikes. No way to hand in a bottle of Black Magic. No way to get the bottle top in position to pour into a waiting mouth on the other side. No room, even, to get a finger or the mouth of a canteen through for the cellmate to suck. And the cell itself wasn’t filthy, but it was bare of everything except a supine Stefan. No food, no water, no bed to hide anything in, no straw. Just Stefan.
Elena screamed and had no idea if she screamed words or just a formless sound of anguish. She threw herself into the cell—or tried to. Her hands grabbed onto curls of steel as sharp as razor that caused blood to well up instantly wherever they touched, and then Damon, who had the fastest reactions, was pulling her back.
And then he just pushed past her and stared. He stared open-mouthed at his younger brother—a gray-faced, skeletal, barely breathing young man, who looked like a child lost in his rumpled, stained, threadbare prison uniform. Damon raised a hand, as if he’d forgotten the barrier already—and Stefan flinched. Stefan seemed not to know or recognize any of them. He peered more closely at the drops of blood left on the razor-sharp fencing where Elena had grasped it, sniffed, and then, as if something had penetrated the fog of his bafflement, looked around dully. Stefan looked up at Damon, whose cloak had fallen, and then, like a baby’s, Stefan’s gaze wandered on.
Damon made a choking sound and turned and, knocking anyone in his way aside, ran the other way down the corner. If he was hoping that enough guards would follow him that his allies could get Stefan out, he was wrong. A few followed, like monkeys, calling out insults. The rest stayed put, behind Sage.
Meanwhile, Elena’s mind was churning and churning out plans. Finally she turned to Sage. “Use all the money we have plus this,” she said, and she reached under her cloak for her canary diamond necklace—over two dozen thumb-sized gems—“and call to me if we need more. Get me half an hour with him. Twenty minutes, then!”—as Sage began to shake his head. “Stall them, somehow; get me at least twenty minutes. I’ll think of something if it kills me.”
After a moment Sage looked her in the eyes and nodded. “I will.”
Then Elena looked at Dr. Meggar pleadingly. Did he have something—did something exist—that would help?
Dr. Meggar’s eyebrows went down, then their inner sides went up. It was a look of grief, of despair. But then he frowned and whispered, “There’s something new—an injection that’s said to help in dire cases. I could try it.”
Elena did her best not to fall at his feet. “Please! Please try it! Please!”
“It won’t help beyond a couple of days—”
“It won’t need to! We’ll get him out by then!”
“All right.” Sage had by now herded all the guards away, saying, “I’m a dealer in gems and there’s something you all should see.”
Dr. Meggar opened his bag and took out of it a syringe. “Wooden needle,” he said with a wan smile as he filled it with a clear red liquid from a vial. Elena had taken another syringe and she examined it eagerly as Dr. Meggar coaxed Stefan by imitation to put his arm up to the bars. At last Stefan did as Dr. Meggar wished—only to jump away with a cry of pain as a syringe was plunged into his arm and stinging liquid injected.
Elena looked at the doctor desperately. “How much did he get?”
“Only about half. It’s all right—I filled it with twice the dose and pushed as hard as I could to get the”—some medical word Elena didn’t recognize—“into him. I knew it would hurt him more, injecting that fast, but I accomplished what I wanted.”
“Good,” Elena said rapturously. “Now I want you to fill this syringe with my blood.”
“Blood?” Dr. Meggar looked dismaye
d.
“Yes! The syringe is long enough to go through the bars. The blood will drip out the other side. He can drink it as it comes out. It might save him!” Elena said every word carefully, as if speaking to a child. She desperately wanted to convey her meaning.
“Oh, Elena.” The doctor sat down, with a clink, and took a hidden bottle of Black Magic out of his tunic. “I’m so sorry. But it’s hard enough for me to get blood out of a vial. My eyes, child—they’re ruined.”
“But glasses—spectacles—?”
“They’re no good to me anymore. It’s a complicated condition. But you have to be very good to actually tap a vein in any case. Most doctors are pretty hopeless; I’m impossible. I’m sorry, child. But it’s been twenty years since I was successful.”
“Then I’ll find Damon and have him open my aorta. I don’t care if it kills me.”
“But I do.”
This new voice coming from the brilliantly lighted cell in front of them made both the doctor and Elena jerk their heads up.
“Stefan! Stefan! Stefan!” Uncaring of what the razor fence would do to her flesh, Elena leaned over to try to hold his hands.
“No,” Stefan whispered, as if sharing a precious secret. “Put your fingers here and here—on top of mine. This fence is only specially treated steel—it numbs my Power but it can’t break my skin.”
Elena put her fingers there and there. And then she was touching Stefan. Really touching him. After so long.
Neither of them spoke. Elena heard Dr. Meggar get up and quietly creep away—to Sage, she supposed. But her mind was full of Stefan. She and he simply looked at each other, trembling, with tears quivering on their lashes, feeling very young.
And very close to death.
“You say I always make you say it first, so I’ll confound you. I love you, Elena.”
Teardrops fell from Elena’s eyes.
“Just this morning I was thinking how many people there are to love. But really it’s only because there’s one in the first place,” she whispered back to him. “One forever. I love you, Stefan! I love you!”
Elena drew back for a moment and wiped her eyes the way all clever girls know how to do without ruining their makeup: by putting her thumbs beneath her lower lashes and leaning backward, scooping tears and kohl into infinitesimal droplets in the air.
For the first time she could think.
“Stefan,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry. I wasted time this morning getting dressed up—well, dressed down—to show you what’s waiting for you when we get you out. But now…I feel…like…”
Now there were no tears in Stefan’s eyes, either. “Show me,” he whispered back eagerly.
Elena stood, and without theatrics, shrugged the cloak off. Shut her eyes, her hair in hundreds of kiss curls, little wispy spirals that were plastered around her face. Her gilded eyelids, waterproof, still gilded. Her only clothing the wisps of golden tulle with jewels attached to make it decent. Her entire body iridescent, perfection in the first bloom of youth that could never be matched or re-created.
There was a sound like a long sigh…and then silence, and Elena opened her eyes, terrified that Stefan might have died. But he was standing up, clutching at the iron gate as if he might wrench it off to get to her.
“I get all this?” he whispered.
“All this for you. Everything for you,” Elena said.
At that moment there was a soft sound behind her and she whirled to see two eyes shining in the dimness of the cell opposite Stefan’s.
33
To her surprise, Elena felt no anger, only a determination to protect Stefan if she could.
And then she saw that in the cell she’d assumed was empty, there was a kitsune.
The kitsune looked nothing like Shinichi or Misao. He had long, long hair as white as snow—but his face was young. He was wearing all white, too, tunic and breeches out of some flowing, silky material and his tail practically filled the small cell, it was so fluffy. He also had fox ears which twitched this way and that. His eyes were the gold of fireworks.
He was gorgeous.
The kitsune coughed again. Then he produced—from his long hair, Elena thought, a very, very small and thin-skinned leather bag.
Like, Elena thought, the perfect bag for one perfect jewel.
Now the kitsune took a pretend bottle of Black Magic (it was heavy and a pretend drink was delicious), and filled the little bag with it. Then he took a pretend syringe (he held it as Dr. Meggar had and tapped it to get the bubbles out) and filled it from the little bag. Finally, he stuck the pretend syringe through his own bars and depressed his thumb, emptying it.
“I can feed you Black Magic wine,” Elena translated. “With his little pouch I can hold it and fill the syringe. Dr. Meggar could fill the syringe, too. But there’s no time, so I’m going to do it.”
“I—” began Stefan.
“You are going to drink as fast as you can.” Elena loved Stefan, wanted to hear his voice, wanted to fill her eyes with him, but there was a life to be saved, and the life was his. She took the little pouch with a bow of thanks to the kitsune and left her cloak on the floor. She was too intent on Stefan to even remember how she was dressed.
Her hands wanted to shake but she wouldn’t let them. She had three bottles of Black Magic here: her own, in her cloak, Dr. Meggar’s, and somewhere, in his cloak, Damon’s.
So with the delicate efficiency of a machine, she repeated what the kitsune had shown her over and over. Dip, pull up lever, push through bars, squirt. Over and over and over.
After about a dozen of these Elena developed a new technique, the catapult. Filling the tiny bag with wine and holding it by the top until Stefan got his mouth positioned, and then, all in one motion, smashing the bag with her palm and squirting a fair amount straight into Stefan’s mouth. It got the bars sticky, it got Stefan sticky; it would never have worked if the steel had been razor-sharp for him, but it actually forced a surprising amount down his throat.
The other bottle of Black Magic wine she put in the kitsune’s cell, which had regular bars. She didn’t quite know how to thank him, but when she could spare a second, she turned to him and smiled. He was chugging the Black Magic straight from the bottle, and his face was set in an expression of cool, appreciative pleasure.
The end came too quickly. Elena heard Sage’s voice booming, “It is no fair! Elena will not be ready! Elena has not had enough time with him!”
Elena didn’t need an anvil dropped on her head. She shoved the last bottle of Black Magic wine into the kitsune’s cell, she bowed for the last time and gave him back his tiny pouch—but with the canary diamond from her navel in it. It was the largest piece of jewelry she had left and she saw him turn it over precisely in long-nailed fingers and then rise to his feet and make a tiny bow to her. There was a moment for a mutual smile and then Elena was cleaning up Dr. Meggar’s bag, and pulling on her red cloak. Then she was turning to Stefan, jelly inside once more, gasping: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make it a medical visit.”
“But you saw the chance to save my life and just couldn’t pass it up.”
Sometimes the brothers were very much alike.
“Stefan, don’t! Oh, I love you!”
“Elena.” He kissed her fingers, pressed to the bars. Then, to the guards: “No, please, please, don’t take her away! For pity’s sake, give us one more minute! Just one!”
But Elena had to let go of his fingers to hold her cloak together. The last she saw of Stefan, he was pounding on the bars with his fists and calling, “Elena, I love you! Elena!”
Then Elena was dragged out of the hallway and a door shut between them. She sagged.
Arms went around her, helped her to walk. Elena got angry! If Stefan was being put back in his old lice-ridden cell—as she supposed he was, right about now—he was being made to walk. And these demons did nothing gently, she knew that. He was probably being driven like an animal with sharp instruments of wood.
/> Elena could walk, too.
As they reached the front of the Shi no Shi lobby Elena looked around. “Where’s Damon?”
“In the coach,” Sage answered in his gentlest voice. “He needed some time.”
Part of Elena said, “I’ll give him time! Time to scream once before I rip his throat out!” But the rest of her was just sad.
“I didn’t get to say anything I wanted to say. I wanted to tell him how sorry Damon is; and how Damon’s changed. He didn’t even remember that Damon had been there—”
“He talked to you?” Sage seemed astonished.
The two of them, Sage and Elena, walked out of the final marble doors of the building of the Gods of Death. That was the name Elena had chosen for it in her own mind.
The carriage was at the curb in front of them, but no one got in. Instead, Sage gently steered Elena a little distance from the others. There he put his large hands on her shoulders and spoke, still in that very soft voice,
“Mon Dieu, my child, but I do not want to say this to you. It is that I must. I fear that even if we get your Stefan out of jail by the day of Lady Bloddeuwedd’s party that—that it will be too late. In three days he will already be…”
“Is that your medical opinion?” Elena said sharply, looking up at him. She knew her face was pinched and white and that he pitied her greatly, but what she wanted was an answer.
“I am not a medical man,” he said slowly. “I am just another vampire.”
“Just another Old One?”
Sage’s eyebrows went up. “Now, what gave you that little idea?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry if I’m wrong. But will you please get Dr. Meggar?”
Sage looked at her for a long minute more, then departed to get the doctor. Both men came back.
Elena was ready for them. “Dr. Meggar, Sage only saw Stefan at the beginning, before you gave him that injection. It was Sage’s opinion that Stefan would be dead in three days. Given the effects of the injection, do you agree?”