by Smith, L. J.
Bloddeuwedd was still after her.
Sage and his group of sturdy young male and female vampires traveled at the pace of a running dog. Saber could lead them, but only as fast as he himself could go. Fortunately few people seemed to want to instigate a fight with a dog that weighed as much as they did—that weighed more than many of the beggars and children they encountered as they reached the bazaar.
The children crowded around the carriage, slowing them further. Sage took the time to exchange an expensive jewel for a purse full of small change and he scattered the coins behind the carriage as they went, allowing Saber free reign.
They passed dozens of stalls and crossing streets, but Saber was no ordinary bloodhound. He had enough Power to confound most vampires. With perhaps only one or two of the key molecules stuck to his nasal membrane he could hunt down his goal. Where another dog might be fooled by one of the hundreds of similar kitsune trails they were traveling through, Saber examined and rejected each of them as being not quite the right shape, size, or sculpture.
There came a time, though, when even Saber seemed defeated. He stood in the center of a six-way crossroads, regardless of traffic, limping slightly, and going in circles. He couldn’t seem to choose a path.
And nor could I, my friend, Sage thought. We’ve come so far, but it’s clear they went on farther. No way to go up or dig down…Sage hesitated, looking around the crimson-colored wheel of roads.
And then he saw something.
Directly across from him, but to his left was a perfumery. It must sell hundreds of fragrances, and billions of scent molecules were deliberately being released into the air.
Saber was blind. Not blind in his keen liquid dark eyes. But where it mattered he was numbed and blinded by the billions of scents that were being blown up his nose.
The vampires in the carriage were calling to go on or go back. They had no sense of real adventure, them. They just wanted a nice show. And undoubtedly many had slaves who were recording the whipping for them so they could enjoy it at leisure at home.
At that moment a flash of blue and gold decided Sage. A Guardian! Eh, bien…
“Heel, Saber!”
Saber’s head and tail drooped as Sage randomly picked one of the directions and had him race alongside the running vampire to get out of the thoroughfare and onto another street.
But then, miraculously, the tail went up again. Sage estimated that there could not be even one molecule of the kitsune’s scent left in Saber’s nostrils now…
…but the memory of the scent…that was still there.
Saber was once again in hunting mode, with head down, tail straight, all his Power and intelligence concentrated on one goal and one goal only: to find another molecule that matched the three-dimensional memory of the one in his mind. Now that he was not blinded by the searing smell of all those different concentrated odors, he was able to think more clearly. And thinking alerted him to slip in between streets, causing a commotion behind him.
“What about the carriage?”
“Forget about the carriage! Don’t lose sight of that guy with the dog!”
Sage, trying to keep up with Saber himself, knew when a chase was about to end. Tranquillité! he thought to Saber. He also barely whispered the word. He had never been certain if his animal friends were telepathic or not, but he liked to believe that they were, while behaving as if they were not. Tranquillité! he told himself.
And so, when the huge black dog with the shining dark eyes and the man ran up the steps to one particular ramshackle building, they did it silently. Then, as if he’d had a pleasant stroll in the country, Saber sat and looked at Sage in the face, laughing-panting. He opened and closed his mouth in a silent parody of a bark.
Sage waited for the young vampires to catch up with him before be opened the door. And, as he wanted the element of surprise, he didn’t knock. Instead he smashed a fist with the Power of a sledgehammer through the door and groped for locks and chains and bolts. He could feel none. He did feel a knob.
Before opening the door, and going into who knew what peril, he said to those behind him, “Any loot we take is the property of Master Damon. I am his foreman and it was only through my dog’s skills that we have made it so far.”
There was agreement, ranging from grumbling to indifferent.
“By the same token,” Sage said, “whatever danger is in there, I face first. Saber! NOW!”
They burst into the room, nearly taking the door off its hinges.
Elena cried out involuntarily. Bloddeuwedd had just done what Damon would not, and lined her back with bloody furrows from her talons.
But even as Elena managed to find the glass door to the outside, she could feel other minds surging to help sustain her, to lift and share some of the pain.
Bonnie and Meredith were picking their way through huge shards of glass to get to her. They were screaming at the owl. And Talon, heroically, was attacking from above.
Elena couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to see. She had to know that this metallic-feeling thing that she’d picked out of Bloddeuwedd’s nest wasn’t some bit of filthy rubbish. She had to know now.
Rubbing the tiny scrap of metal against the ill-fated scarlet dress, she took a moment to glance downward, to see crimson sunlight sparkle against gold and diamonds and two folded-back little ears and two bright green alexandrite eyes.
The duplicate of the first fox key half, but facing the other way.
Elena’s legs almost gave way underneath her.
She was holding the second half of the fox key.
Hurriedly, then, Elena brought up her free hand and plunged her fingers down into the carefully made little pocket behind the diamond insert. It concealed a tiny pouch, specially sewn there by Lady Ulma herself. In it was the first half of the fox key, replaced there as soon as Saber and Talon had finished with it. Now, as she shoved the second half-key into the pocket with the first, she was disconcerted to feel movement in the pouch. The two pieces of the fox key were—what, becoming one?
A black beak slammed into the wall beside her.
Without even thinking, Elena ducked and rolled to escape it. When her fingers flew back to make sure that the pouch was tied up and secure, she was astonished to feel a familiar shape resting inside.
Not a key?
Not a key!
The world was spinning wildly around Elena. Nothing mattered; not the object; not her own life. The kitsune twins had tricked them, had made fools of the idiot humans and the vampire who had dared to face up to them. There was no double fox key.
Still, hope refused to die. What was it Stefan used to say? Mai dire mai—never say never. Knowing what a chance she was taking, knowing she was a fool for taking it, Elena thrust her finger again into the pouch.
Something cool slipped onto one finger and stayed there.
She glanced down and for a moment was arrested by the sight. There, on her ring finger, gleamed a gold, diamond-encrusted ring. It represented two abstract foxes curled together, one facing each way. Each fox had two ears, two green alexandrite eyes, and a pointed nose.
And that was all. Of what use was a trinket like this to Stefan? It bore no resemblance to the double-winged keys shown in the pictures of kitsune shrines.
As treasure, it was surely worth a million times less than what they had already spent to get it.
And then Elena noticed something.
A light shone from the eyes of one of the foxes. If she hadn’t been staring at it so closely, or if she hadn’t been by now in the White Waltz Ballroom, where colors showed true, she might not have noticed it. But the light was shining straight ahead of her as she turned her hand sideways. Now it was shining from four eyes.
It was shining in exactly the direction of Stefan’s prison cell.
Hope rose up like a phoenix in Elena’s heart, and took her soaring on a mental journey out of this labyrinth of glass rooms. The music playing was the waltz from Faust. Away from the sun, deep
into the heart of the city, that was where Stefan was. And that was where the pale green light from the fox’s eyes was shining.
Riding high on hope, she turned the ring. The light winked out of both fox’s eyes, but when she turned the ring so that the second fox was in line with Stefan’s cell, it winked on.
Secret signals. How long could she have owned a ring like that and done nothing if she hadn’t already known where Stefan’s prison was?
Longer than Stefan had left to live, probably.
Now she only had to survive long enough to reach him.
39
Elena waded into the crowd feeling like a soldier. She didn’t know why. Maybe because she had thought of a quest and had managed to complete it and stay alive and bring back loot. Maybe because she bore honorable wounds. Maybe because above her there was an enemy who was still out for her blood.
Come to think of it, she thought, I’d better get all these noncombatants out of here. We can keep them in a safe house—well, a few dozen safe houses and—
What was she thinking? Safe house was a phrase from a book. She wasn’t responsible for these people—idiots, mostly, who had stood, slavering, and watched her being whipped. But—despite that, maybe she should get them out of here.
“Bloddeuwedd!” she cried dramatically and pointed to a wheeling silhouette above. “Bloddeuwedd is free! She gave me these!”—pointing to the three lacerations on her back. “She’ll go after you, too!”
At first most of the angry exclamation seemed to be about the fact that Elena now had a marked back. Elena was in no mood to argue. There was only one person here she wanted to talk to now. Keeping Bonnie and Meredith close behind her, she called.
Damon! Damon it’s me! Where are you?
There was so much telepathic traffic that she doubted he would hear her.
But finally, she caught a faint, Elena?…Yes…
Elena, hold on to me. Think of holding me physically, and I’ll take us to a different frequency.
Hold on to a voice? But Elena imagined holding on to Damon tightly, tightly, while she physically held Bonnie’s and Meredith’s hands.
Now can you hear me? This time the voice was much clearer, much louder.
Yes. But I can’t see you.
But I see you. I’m coming to—WATCH OUT!
Too late, Elena’s senses warned her of a huge shadow plummeting from above. She couldn’t move quickly enough to get out of the way of a snapping, alligator-sized beak.
But Damon could. Leaping from somewhere, he gathered her and Bonnie and Meredith all in one great armful and leaped again, hitting grass and rolling.
Oh, God! Damon!
“Is anybody hurt?” he asked aloud.
“I’m fine,” Meredith said quietly, calmly. “But I suspect I owe you my life. Thank you.”
“Bonnie?” Elena asked.
I’m okay. I mean, “I’m okay. But Elena, your back—”
For the first time, Damon was able to turn Elena and see the wounds on her back. “I…did that? But…I thought…”
“Bloddeuwedd did that,” Elena said sharply, looking upward for a circling shape in the deep red sky. “She just barely touched me. She has talons like knives, like steel. We have to go, now!”
Damon put both hands on her shoulders. “And come back when things have calmed down, you mean.”
“And never come back! Oh, God, here she comes!”
Something out of the corner of her eye became baseball-sized in an instant, volleyball-sized in a second, human-sized in a moment. And then they were all scattering, leaping, rolling, trying to get away, except Damon, who seized Elena and shouted, “This is my slave! If you have any argument with her, you first argue with me!”
“And I am Bloddeuwedd, created by the gods, condemned to be a murderer every night. I’ll kill you first, then eat her, the thief!” Bloddeuwedd called back in her raucous new voice. “Two bites is all it will take.”
Damon, I need to tell you something!
“I’ll fight you, but my slave is out of it!”
“First bite; here I come!”
Damon, we have to go!
A scream of primal pain and fury.
Damon was standing slightly crouched with a huge piece of glass held in his hand like a sword and great black drops of blood were dripping from where he had—oh, God! Elena thought—he’d put out one of Bloddeuwedd’s eyes!
“YOU WILL ALL DIE! ALL!”
Bloddeuwedd made a charge at a random vampire directly below her and Elena screamed as the vampire screamed. The black beak had caught him by one leg and was lifting him.
But Damon was running forward, jumping, slashing. With a scream of fury, Bloddeuwedd took to the sky again.
Now everyone understood the danger. Two other vampires rushed to take their comrade from Damon, and Elena was glad that her friends were not responsible for another life. She had too much on her hands already.
Damon, I’m leaving now. You can come with me or not. I’ve got the key.
Elena sent the words on the frequency that they were more or less alone on, and she sent it without dramatics. She had no room for drama left. She’d been stripped of everything except the need to get to Stefan.
This time, she knew Damon heard her.
At first, she thought Damon was dying. That Bloddeuwedd had somehow come back and pierced him through his entire body, as with a spear made of light. Then she realized that the feeling was rapture, and two tiny child hands reached out of the light and clung to hers, allowing her to pull a thin, ragged, but laughing child away free.
No chains, she thought dizzily. He’s not even wearing slave bracelets.
“My brother!” he told her. “My little brother’s going to live!”
“Well, that’s a fine thing,” Elena said shakily.
“He’s going to live!” A tiny frown line appeared. “If you hurry! And take good care of him! And—”
Elena put two fingers over his lips, very gently. “You don’t need to worry about anything like that. You just be happy.”
The little boy laughed. “I will! I am!”
“Elena!”
Elena came out of—well, she supposed it was a daze, although it had been more real than many other things she’d experienced recently.
“Elena!” Damon was trying desperately to restrain himself. “Show me the key!”
Slowly, majestically, Elena lifted her hand.
Damon’s shoulders tensed, for—something—went down.
“It’s a ring,” he said dully. The slow and majestic bit hadn’t worked on him at all.
“That’s what I thought at first. It’s a key. I’m not asking you, or seeing if you agree with me; I’m telling you. It’s a key. The light from its eyes points to Stefan.”
“What light?”
“I’ll show you later. Bonnie! Meredith! We’re leaving.”
“YOU’RE NOT IF I SAY YOU’RE NOT!”
“Watch out!” screamed Bonnie.
The owl was diving again. And again, at the last second, Damon gathered the three girls and leaped. The owl’s beak struck not grass nor shards of glass but the marble steps. They cracked. There was a scream of pain and another, as Damon, nimble as a dancer, slashed at the giant bird’s one good eye. He got in a cut right above it. Blood began to fill the eye.
Elena couldn’t stand any more. Ever since starting out on this journey with Damon and Matt, she had been a vial filling with anger. Drop by drop, with each new outrage, that anger had filled and filled the vial. Now her rage was about to fill it to overflowing.
But then…what would happen?
She didn’t want to know. She was afraid she wouldn’t survive it.
What she did know was that she couldn’t watch any more pain and blood and anguish right now. Damon genuinely enjoyed fighting. Good. Let him. She was going to Stefan if she had to walk the whole way.
Meredith and Bonnie were silent. They knew Elena in this mood. She wasn’t fooling around. A
nd neither of them wanted to be left behind.
It was exactly at that moment that the carriage came rumbling up to the base of the marble stairs.
Sage, who obviously knew something about human nature, demonic nature, vampiric nature, and various kinds of bestial nature, jumped out of the carriage with two swords drawn. He also whistled. In a moment a shadow—a small one—came streaking to him out of the sky.
Last, slowly, stretching each leg like a tiger, came Saber, who immediately pulled back his lips to show an amazing number of teeth.
Elena leaped toward the carriage, her eyes meeting Sage’s. Help me, she thought desperately. And his eyes said just as plainly, Have no fear.
Blindly, she reached behind her with both hands. One small, fine-boned, lightly trembling hand was thrust into hers. One slim, cool hand, hard as a boy’s but with long tapering fingers grabbed her other one.
There was no one here to trust. No one to say good-bye to, or leave messages of good-bye with. Elena scrambled into the carriage. She got into the backseat, the farthest from the front, to accommodate incoming humans and animals.
And in they did come, like an avalanche. She had dragged Bonnie with her, and Meredith had followed, so that when Saber leaped into his accustomed place he landed on three soft laps.
Sage hadn’t wasted a moment. With Talon clamped on his left wrist, he left just enough room for Damon’s final spring—and a spring it was. Cracked and broken, oozing black fluid, Bloddeuwedd’s beak hit the end of the marble stairs where Damon had been standing.
“Directions!” shouted Sage, but only after the horses were heading at a gallop—somewhere, anywhere, away.
“Oh, please don’t let her hurt the horses,” Bonnie gasped.
“Oh, please don’t let her split this roof like cardboard,” said Meredith, somehow able to be wry even when her life was in danger.
“Directions, s’il vous plaît!” roared Sage.
“The prison, of course,” panted Elena. She felt that it had been a long time since she had been able to get enough air.