by Smith, L. J.
Matt sucked in his breath. Three ley lines, huh? God, it was probably an invasion of monsters.
He didn’t even dare to hope.
Elena didn’t know if she had needed to say USA or Earth, or even if the door could take her to Fell’s Church, or if Damon would have to give her the name of some gate that was close to it. But…surely…with all those ley lines…
The door opened, revealing a small room like an elevator.
Sage said quietly, “Can you four carry him if you have to fight, too?” And—after a second to unravel what this meant—three shrieks of protest, in three different feminine tones, came.
“No! Oh, please, no! Oh don’t leave us!!”—Bonnie, begging.
“You’re not coming home with us?”—Meredith, straight-from-the-shoulder.
“I order you to get in—and make it quick!”—Elena.
“Such a dominant woman,” murmured Sage. “Ah, well, it seems the Great Pendulum has swung again. I am only a man. I obey.”
“What? Does that mean you’re coming?” Bonnie cried.
“It means I am coming, yes.” Gently, Sage took Stefan’s wasted body in his arms and stepped into the little cubicle inside the door. Unlike the first keys Elena had used today, this one seemed to work more like a voice-activated elevator…she hoped. After all, Shinichi and Misao had each only needed one key for themselves. Here, a number of people might want to go to the same place at once.
She hoped.
Sage back-kicked Stefan’s old bedding away. Something rattled on the ground. “Oh—” Stefan reached helplessly for it. “It’s my Elena diamond. I found it on the floor after…”
“Plenty more where that came from,” Meredith said.
“It’s important to him,” Damon, who was already inside, said. Instead of crowding farther into the elevator, the little room that might disappear at any second, that might be gone for Fell’s Church before he could turn back, he walked out into the lobby, looked closely at the floor, and knelt. Then, quickly, he reached down and then got up and hurried into the little room again.
“Do you want to hold it or shall I?”
“You hold it…for me. Take care of it.”
Anyone who knew of Damon’s track record, especially with regards to Elena or even an old diamond that had belonged to Elena, would have said Stefan had to be a madman. But Stefan wasn’t mad.
He clasped his hand over his brother’s that held the diamond.
“And I’ll hold on to you,” he said with a faint, wry smile.
“I don’t know if anyone is interested,” Meredith said, “but there is a single button on the inside of this contraption.”
“Push it!” cried Sage and Bonnie, but Elena cried more loudly, “No—wait!”
She’d spotted something. Across the lobby, the Guardians had been unable to stop a single, apparently unarmed citizen from entering the room and crossing the floor at a high-paced graceful glide. He must have been over six feet tall, wearing an entirely white tunic and breeches, which matched his long white hair, alert foxlike ears, and the long flowing silky tail that waved behind him.
“Shut the door!” bellowed Sage.
“Oh, my!” breathed Bonnie.
“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” snarled Damon.
“Don’t worry. It’s only a fellow prisoner. A silent fellow. Hey, you got out, too!” Stefan was smiling and that was enough for Elena. And the intruder was holding out something to him that—well, it couldn’t be what it looked like—but it was getting quite close now and it looked like a bouquet of flowers.
“That is a kitsune, is it not?” Meredith asked, as if the world had gone mad around her.
“A prisoner—” said Stefan.
“A THIEF!” shouted Sage.
“Hush!” said Elena. “He can probably hear even if he can’t speak.”
By then the kitsune was upon them. He met Stefan’s eye, glanced at the others and held out the bouquet, which was heavily sealed in plastic wrap and some kind of long stickers with magical-looking inscriptions on them.
“This is for Stefan,” he said.
Everyone, including Stefan, gasped.
“Now I must deal with some tiresome Guardians.” He sighed. “And you must press the button to make the room go, Beauty,” he said to Elena.
Elena, who had momentarily been fascinated by the whisking of a fluffy tail around silken breeches suddenly blushed scarlet. She was remembering certain things. Certain things that had seemed very different…in a lonely dungeon…in the dark of artificially formed night….
Oh, well. Best to put a brave face on it.
“Thank you,” she said, and pushed the button. The doors began to close. “Thank you again!” she added, bowing slightly to the kitsune. “I’m Elena.”
“Yoroshiku. I am—”
The door shut between them.
“Is it that you have gone crazy?” Sage cried. “Taking a bouquet from a fox!”
“You’re the one who seems to know him, Monsieur Sage,” Meredith said. “What’s his name?”
“I do not know his name! I do know he stole three-fifths of the Seine Cloister Treasure from me! I know that he is expert, but expert at cheating at the cards! Ahh!”
The last was not a cry of rage but an exclamation of alarm, for the little room was moving sideways, plunging downward, almost stopping, before it resumed its former steady motion.
“Will it really take us to Fell’s Church?” Bonnie asked timidly, and Damon put an arm around her.
“It’ll take us somewhere,” he promised. “And then we’ll see. We’re a pretty able set of survivalists.”
“Which reminds me,” Meredith said. “I think Stefan looks better.” Elena, who had been helping to buffer him from the dimensional elevator’s motion, glanced up at her quickly.
“Do you really? Or is it just the light? I think he should be feeding,” she said anxiously.
Stefan flushed, and Elena pressed fingers to her lips to stop them trembling. Don’t, darling, she said voicelessly. Every one of these people have been willing to give their life for you—or for me—for us. I’m healthy. I’m still bleeding. Please don’t waste it.
Stefan murmured, “I’ll stop the bleeding.” But when she bent to him, as she had known he would, he drank.
42
By now Matt and Mrs. Flowers couldn’t ignore the blinding lights anymore. They had to go outside.
But just as Matt opened the door there was—well, Matt didn’t know what it was. Something blasted straight out of the ground and into the sky, where it got smaller and smaller, became a star, and disappeared.
A meteor that had gone through the Earth? But wouldn’t that mean tsunamis and earthquakes and shockwaves and forest fires and maybe even the Earth ripping apart? If one meteor that hit the surface could kill off all the dinosaurs…
The light that had been shining upward had faded slightly.
“Well, bless my soul,” said Mrs. Flowers in a small, shaken voice. “Matt, dear, are you all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. But…” Matt’s vocabulary couldn’t stand the strain. “What the hell was it?”
And to his slight surprise, Mrs. Flowers said, “My sentiments exactly!”
“Wait—there’s something moving. Get back!”
“Dear Matt, be careful with that gun…”
“It’s people! Oh, my God! It’s Elena.” Matt abruptly sat down on the ground. He could only whisper now. “Elena. She’s alive. She’s alive!”
From what Matt could see, there were a group of people climbing and helping others climb out of a perfectly rectangular hole, perhaps five feet deep, in Mrs. Flowers’s angelica patch.
They could hear voices. “All right,” Elena was saying, as she bent down. “Now grab my hands.”
But the way she was dressed! A scrap of scarlet that showed all sorts of scratches and cuts on her legs. On top—well, the remains of the gown covered about what a bikini would. And she was wearin
g the largest, most sparkly costume jewelry that Matt had ever seen.
More voices, going on through Matt’s shock.
“Be careful, yes? I will lift him to you—”
“I can climb out my own.”—surely that was Stefan!
“You see?” Elena rejoiced. “He says he can climb out his own!”
“Oui, but perhaps one small lift—”
“This is hardly the time for machismo, little brother.” And that, Matt thought, fingering the revolver, was Damon. Blessed bullets…
“No, I want—to do it myself—okay—got it. There.”
“There! You see! He’s better every second!” Elena caroled.
“Where’s the diamond? Damon?” Stefan sounded anxious.
“I have it safe. Relax.”
“I want to hold it. Please.”
“More than you want to hold me?” Elena asked. There was a blur and then Stefan was lying back in her arms, while she said, “Easy, easy.”
Matt stared. Damon was right behind them, almost as if he belonged there. “I’ll watch the diamond,” he said flatly. “You watch your girl.”
“Excuse me—I’m sorry, but…could somebody please lift me out?” And that was Bonnie! Bonnie, sounding plaintive but not afraid or unhappy. Bonnie giggling! “Have we got all the sacks of star balls?”
“We’ve got all the ones from that house we found.” And that was Meredith. Thank God. They’d all made it out. But despite his thoughts, his eyes were drawn again to one figure—the one who seemed to be supervising things—the one with golden hair.
“We need the star balls because any one of them might be—” she was beginning, when Bonnie cried out “Oh, look! Look! It’s Mrs. Flowers and Matt!”
“Now, Bonnie, they’d hardly be waiting for us,” Meredith put in.
“Where? Bonnie, where?” Elena demanded.
“If it’s Shinichi and Misao in disguise I’m going to—hey, Matt!”
“Will someone please tell me where?”
“Right there, Meredith!”
“Oh! Mrs. Flowers! Um…I hope we didn’t wake you.”
“I have never had a happier awakening,” Mrs. Flowers said solemnly. “I can see what you have been through in the Dark Place. Your—er—lack of sufficient clothing…”
A sudden silence. Meredith glanced at Bonnie. Bonnie glanced at Meredith.
“I know these clothes and gems may seem a little too much…”
Matt found his voice. “Those jewels? They’re real?”
“Oh, they’re nothing. And we’re all dirty….”
“Forgive me. We stink—which is my fault—” Stefan began, only to have Elena cut in.
“Mrs. Flowers, Matt: Stefan’s been a prisoner! All this time! Starved and tortured—oh, God!”
“Elena. Shhh. You got me back.”
“We got you back. Now, I’ll never let you go. Ever, ever.”
“Easy, love. I really need a bath and—” Stefan stopped suddenly. “There’re no iron bars! Nothing to shut off my Powers! I can…” He stepped away from Elena, who clung with one hand. There was a soft, silvery flash of light, like a full moon appearing and disappearing in their midst.
“Over here!” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t want little beastly parasites, I can take care of you.”
“I’m your girl,” said Meredith. “I have a phobia about fleas, and Damon never even got me any flea powder. What a master!”
There was laughter at this, laughter Matt didn’t understand. Meredith was wearing—well, it had to be costume jewelry—but still it looked like about a few million dollars’ worth of sapphires.
Stefan took Meredith’s hand. There was the same soft flash of light. And then Meredith stepped back saying, “Thanks.”
Stefan’s low response was, “Thank you, Meredith.” Meredith’s blue dress was at least in one piece, Matt observed.
Bonnie—whose dress had been slashed into starlight-colored ribbons—was raising a hand. “Me, too, please!”
Stefan took her hand, and it happened all over again. “Thank you, Stefan! Oooh! I feel so much better! I hated itching!”
“Thank you, Bonnie. I hated to think I was dying alone.”
“Other vampires, take care of yourselves!” Elena said, as if she had a clipboard and were checking items off. “And, Stefan, please—” She held out her hands to him.
He knelt in front of her, kissed both her hands, then enshrouded them in the soft white light.
“But I’d still like a bath…” said Bonnie pleadingly, as the new vampire—the tall fit one—and Damon had each sparked a moonlight glow around themselves.
Mrs. Flowers spoke up. “There are four working bathtubs in that house: in Stefan’s room, in my room, in the rooms on either side of Stefan’s. Be my guest. I’ll put some bath salts in each right now.” And then she added, holding her arms out to the whole ragged, bleeding, dirty bunch of them: “My house is yours, my dears.”
There was a chorus of passionate “thank yous.”
“I’ll arrange a rota. For feeding Stefan, I mean. If you girls are willing,” Elena added quickly, looking at Bonnie and Meredith. “He doesn’t need much, just a little every hour until morning.”
Elena still seemed very shy of Matt. Matt was very shy of her. But he stepped forward, empty hands held up to show that he was harmless. “Is it a rule that it’s only girls? Because I’ve got blood, too, and I’m healthy as a horse.”
Stefan quickly looked at him. “No rule about only girls. But you don’t have to—”
“I want to help you.”
“Okay, then. Thank you, Matt.”
The proper response seemed to be “Thank you, Stefan,” but Matt couldn’t think of anything until, “Thanks for taking care of Elena.”
Stefan smiled. “Thank Damon for that. He and the others all helped me—and each other.”
“We Also Walk Dogs—at least Sage does,” Damon said slyly.
“Oh—that reminds me. I should use that de-parasiting trick on my two friends. Saber! Talon! Heel!” He added a whistle that Matt could never have imitated.
In any case, Matt was operating in a dream. A huge dog, almost as big as a pony, seemingly, and a falcon came out of the darkness.
“Now,” the fit vampire said, and once again the soft light shone.
And then: “There. If you don’t mind; I prefer to sleep out-of-doors with my friends. I am grateful for all your kindnesses, Madame, and my name is Sage. The hawk is Talon; the dog, Saber.”
Elena said, “Dibs on Stefan’s bath for Stefan and me, and Mrs. Flowers’s bath for the girls. You boys can work things out on your own.”
“I,” Mrs. Flowers said gravely, “will be in the kitchen, making sandwiches.” She turned to go.
That was when Shinichi arose from the earth above them.
Or rather when his face arose. It was clearly an illusion, but a terrifying and marvelous one. Shinichi actually seemed to be there, a giant, perhaps supporting the world on his shoulders. The black part of his hair blended in with the night, but the scarlet tips made a flaming halo around his face. Having come from a land that was dominated by a giant red sun, night and day, it was an odd sight.
Shinichi’s eyes were red as well, like two small moons in the sky, and they focused on the group by Mrs. Flowers’s house.
“Hello,” he said. “What, you look so surprised? You shouldn’t be. I really couldn’t let you come back without popping up to say ‘hello.’ After all, it’s been a long time—for some of you,” the giant face said, grinning. “Also, of course, to share in the festivities—we’ve saved little Stefan, and, my, we even fought an oversized chicken to do it.”
“I’d like to see you take Bloddeuwedd on, one on one, and get a secret key out of her nest, at the same time,” Bonnie began indignantly, but stopped when Meredith squeezed her arm.
Sage, meanwhile was murmuring something about what his own “oversized chicken,” Talon, would do if Shinichi were brave enough to show
up in person.
Shinichi ignored all this. “Oh, yes, and the mental calisthenics you had to go through. Truly formidable. Well, never again will we mistake you for blunder-headed idiots who never really asked why my sister would give you any clues in the first place, much less clues that Outsiders could understand. I mean”—he leered—“why not just go and swallow the key in the first place, hmm?”
“You’re bluffing,” Meredith said flatly. “You underestimated us, plain and simple.”
“Maybe,” said Shinichi. “Or maybe it was something else entirely.”
“You lost,” said Damon. “I realize that may be an entirely new concept for you, but it’s true. Elena has gained much more control over her Powers.”
“But will they work here?” Shinichi smiled eerily. “Or will they suddenly disappear in the light of a pale yellow sun? Or in the depths of true darkness?”
“Don’t let him bait you, Madame,” Sage shouted. “Your Powers come from a place he cannot enter!”
“Oh, yes, and the renegade. The Rebel’s rebel son. I wonder…what are you calling yourself this time? Cage? Rage? I wonder what these children will think when they learn who you really are?”
“It won’t matter who he is,” Bonnie cried. “We know that. We know that he’s a vampire, but that he can be gentle and kind and he’s saved us over and over again.” She shut her eyes, but held her ground against the gale of Shinichi’s laughter.
“So ‘Madame,’” Shinichi mocked, “you think you have gained ‘Sage.’ But I wonder if you know what in chess we call a ‘gambit’ is? No? Well, I’m sure your intellectual friend will be glad to inform you.”
There was a pause. Then Meredith said, with no expression at all, “A gambit is when a chess player sacrifices something—for instance, a pawn—deliberately—just to get something else. A position on the chessboard that they want, for instance.”
“I knew you’d be able to tell them. What do you think of our first gambit?”
Another silence, then Meredith said: “I presume you mean you’ve given us back Stefan to achieve something better.”
“Oh, if you only had golden hair—as your friend Elena has so generously displayed.”