Contents 10 страница

suspense.

But they hadn’t really used the time to think over the words “Dark

Dimension” or to imagine the number of ways its darkness might be

manifested.

“Our new home,” Damon said grimly. Watching him instead of the

landscape, Elena realized from the tension in his neck and shoulders that

Damon was not enjoying himself. She’d thought he’d be heading into

his own particular paradise, this world of human slaves, and torture for

entertainment, whose only rule was self-preservation of the individual

ego. Now she realized that she had been wrong. For Damon this was a

world of beings with Powers as great or greater than his own. He was

going to have to claw out a foothold here among them, just like any

urchin on the street—except that he couldn’t afford to make any

mistakes. They needed to find a way not just to live, but to live in luxury

and mingle with high society, if they were to have any chance to rescue

Stefan.

Stefan—no, she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of thinking about

him at that time. Once she started she would become undone, begin to

demand ridiculous things, like that they go round to the prison, just to

stare at it, like a junior high kid with a crush on an older boy, who just

wanted to be driven “by his house” to worship it. And then what would

that do to their plans for a jailbreak later? Plan A was: don’t make

mistakes, and Elena would stick to that until she found a better one.

That was how Damon and his “slaves” came to the Dark

Dimension, through the Demon Gate. The smallest one needed to be

revived with water in the face before she could get up and walk.

H urrying behind Damon, Elena tried not to look either to the left or the

right. She could see too much of what to Meredith and Bonnie must

have appeared to be featureless darkness.

There were depots on either side, places where slaves were

obviously brought to be bought or sold or transported later. Elena could

hear the whimpers of children in the darkness and if she hadn’t been so

frightened herself, she would have rushed off looking for the crying

kids.

But I can’t do that, because I’m a slave now, she thought, with a

sense of shock that ran up from her fingertips. I’m not a real human

being anymore. I’m a piece of property.

She found herself once again staring at the back of Damon’s head

and wondering how on earth she had talked herself into this. She

understood what being a slave meant—in fact she seemed to have an

intuitive understanding of it that surprised her—and it was Not a Good

Thing to Be.

It meant that she could be…well, that anything could be done to

her and it was no one’s business but that of her owner. And her owner

(how had he talked her into this again?) was Damon, of all people.

He could sell all three girls—Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie—and be

out of here in an hour with the profits.

They hurried through this area of the docks, the girls with their

eyes on their feet to prevent themselves from stumbling.

And then they crested a hill. Below them, in a sort of crater-shaped

formation, was a city.

The slums were on the edges, and crowded almost up to where

they were standing. But there was a chicken-wire fence in front of them,

which kept them isolated even while allowing them a bird’s-eye view of

the city. If they had still been in the cave they had entered, this would

have been the greatest underground cavern imaginable—but they

weren’t underground anymore.

“It happened sometime during the ferry ride,” Damon said. “We

made—well—a twist in space, say.” He tried to explain and Elena tried

to understand. “You went in through the Demon Gate, and when you

came out you were no longer in Earth’s Dimension, but in another one

entirely.” Elena only had to look up at the sky to believe him. The

constellations were different; there was no Little or Big Dipper, no

North Star.

Then there was the sun. It was much larger, but much dimmer than

Earth’s, and it never left the horizon. At any moment about half of it

showed, day and night—terms which, as Meredith pointed out, had lost

their rational meaning here.

As they approached a gate made of chicken wire that would finally

let them out of the slave-holding area, they were stopped by what Elena

would later learn was a Guardian.

She would learn that in a way, the Guardians were the rulers of the

Dark Dimension, although they themselves came from another place far

away and it was almost as if they had permanently occupied this little

slice of Hell, trying to impose order on the slum king and feudal lords

who divided the city among themselves.

This Guardian was a tall woman with hair the color of Elena’s

own—true gold—cut square at shoulder length, and she paid no

attention at all to Damon but immediately asked Elena, who was first in

line behind him, “Why are you here?”

Elena was glad, very glad, that Damon had taught her to control

her aura. She concentrated on that while her brain hummed at supersonic

speed, wondering what the right response to this question was. The

response that would leave them free and not get them sent home.

Damon didn’t train us for this, was her first thought. And her

second was, no, because he’s never been here before. He doesn’t know

how everything works here, only some things.

And if it looked as if this woman was going to try to interfere with

him, he might just go crazy and attack her, a helpful little voice added

from somewhere in Elena’s subconscious. Elena doubled the speed of

her scheming. Creative lying had once been a sort of specialty of hers,

and now she said the first thing that popped into her head and got a

thumbs-up: “I gambled with him and lost.”

Well, it sounded good. People lost all sorts of things when they

gambled: plantations, talismans, horses, castles, bottles of genii. And if it

turned out not to be enough of a reason, she could always say that that

was just the start of her sad story. Best of all, it was in a way, true. Long

ago she’d given her life for Damon as well as for Stefan, and Damon had

not exactly turned over a new leaf as she’d requested. Half a leaf,

maybe. A leaflet.

The Guardian was staring at her with a puzzled look in her true

blue eyes. People had stared at Elena all her life—being young and very

beautiful meant that you fretted only when people didn’t stare. But the

puzzlement was a bit of a worry. Was the tall woman reading her mind?

Elena tried to add another layer of white noise at the top. What came out

was a few lines of a Britney Spears song. She turned the psychic volume

up.

The tall woman put two fingers to her head like someone with a

sudden headache. Then she looked at Meredith.

“Why…are you here?”

Usually Meredith didn’t lie at all, but when she did she treated it as

an intellectual art. Fortunately, she also never tried to fix something that

wasn’t broken. “The same for me,” she said sadly.

“And you?” The woman was looking at Bonnie, who was looking

as if she were going to be sick again.

Meredith gave Bonnie a little nudge. Then she stared at her hard.

Elena stared at her harder, knowing that all Bonnie had to do was

mumble “Me, too.” And Bonnie was a good “me, too-er” after Meredith

had staked out a position.

The problem was that Bonnie was also either in trance, or so close

to it that it didn’t matter.

“Shadow Souls,” Bonnie said.

The woman blinked, but not the way you blink when someone says

something totally unresponsive. She blinked in astonishment.

Oh, God, Elena thought. Bonnie’s got their password or

something. She’s making predictions or prophesying or whatever.

“Shadow…souls?” the Guardian said, watching Bonnie closely.

“The city is full of them,” Bonnie said miserably.

The Guardian’s fingers danced over what looked like a palmtop

computer. “We know that. This is the place they come.”

“Then you should stop it.”

“We have only limited jurisdiction. The Dark Dimension is ruled

by a dozen factions of overlords, who have slumlords to carry out their

orders.”

Bonnie, Elena thought, trying to cut through Bonnie’s mental haze

even at the cost of the Guardian hearing her. These are the police.

At the same moment, Damon took over. “She’s the same as the

others,” he said. “Except that she’s psychic.”

“No one asked your opinion,” the Guardian snapped at him,

without even glancing in Damon’s direction. “I don’t care what kind of

bigwig you are down there”—she jerked her head contemptuously at the

city of lights—“you’re on my turf behind this fence. And I’m asking the

little red-haired girl: is what he is saying the truth?”

Elena had a moment of panic. After all they’d been through, if

Bonnie blew it now…

This time Bonnie blinked. Whatever else she was trying to

communicate, it was true that she was the same as Meredith and Elena.

And it was true that she was psychic. Bonnie was a terrible liar when she

had too much time to think about things, but to this she could say

without hesitation, “Yes, that’s true.”

The Guardian stared at Damon.

Damon stared back as if he could do it all night. He was a

champion out-starer.

And the Guardian waved them away.

“I suppose even a psychic can have a bad day,” she said, then

added to Damon, “Take care of them. You realize that all psychics have

to be licensed?”

Damon, with his best grand seigneur manner, said, “Madam, these

are not professional psychics. They are my private assistants.”

“And I’m not a ‘Madam’ I’m addressed as ‘Your Judgment.’ By

the way, people addicted to gambling usually come to horrible ends

here.”

Ha, ha, Elena thought. If she only knew what kind of gamble we all

are taking…well, we’d probably be worse off than Stefan is right now.

Outside the fence was a courtyard. There were litters here, as well

as rickshaws and small goatcarts. No carriages, no horses. Damon got

two litters, one for himself and Elena and one for Meredith and Bonnie.

Bonnie, still looking confused, was staring at the sun. “You mean

it never finishes rising?”

“No,” Damon said patiently. “And it’s setting here, not rising.

Perpetual twilight in the City of Darkness itself. You’ll see more as we

move along. Don’t touch that,” he added, as Meredith moved to untie the

rope around Bonnie’s wrists before either of them got on the litter. “You

two can take the ropes off in the litter if you draw the curtains, but don’t

lose them. You’re still slaves, and you have to wear something symbolic

around your arms to show it—even if it’s just matching bracelets.

Otherwise I get in trouble. Oh, and you’ll have to go veiled in the city.”

“We— what?” Elena flashed a look of disbelief at him.

Damon just flashed back a 250-kilowatt smile and before Elena

could say another word, he was drawing gauzy sheer fabrics from his

black bag and handing them out. The veils were of a size to cover an

entire body.

“But you only have to put it on your head or tie it on your hair or

something,” Damon said dismissively.

“What’s it made of?” Meredith asked, feeling the light silky

material, which was transparent and so thin that the wind threatened to

whip it from her fingers.

“How should I know?”

“It’s different colors on the other side!” Bonnie discovered, letting

the wind transform her pale green veil into a shimmering silver.

Meredith was shaking out a dramatic deep violet silk into a mysterious

dark blue dotted with a myriad of stars. Elena, who had been expecting

her own veil to be blue, found herself looking up at Damon. He was

holding a tiny square of cloth in a clenched fist.

“Let’s see how good you’ve gotten,” he murmured, nodding her

closer to him. “Guess what color.”

Another girl might only have noticed the sloe black eyes and the

pure, carven lines of Damon’s face, or maybe the wild, wicked

smile—somehow wilder and sweeter than ever here, like a rainbow in

the middle of a hurricane. But Elena also made note of the stiffness in

his neck and shoulders—places where tension built up. The Dark

Dimension was already taking its toll on him, psychically, even as he

mocked it.

She wondered how many soundings of Power by the merely

curious he was having to block each second. She was about to offer to

help by opening herself up to the eldritch world, when he snapped,

“Guess!” in a tone that didn’t make it a suggestion.

“Gold,” Elena said instantly, surprising herself. When she reached

to take the golden square from his hand a powerful, pleasurable feeling

of electric current shot from her palm up her arm and seemed to skewer

her straight through the heart. Damon clung to her fingers briefly as she

took the square and Elena found she could still feel electricity pulsing

from his fingertips.

The underside of her veil blew out white and sparkling as if set

with diamonds. God, maybe they were diamonds, she thought. How

could you tell with Damon?

“Your wedding veil, perhaps?” Damon murmured, lips close to her

ear. The rope around Elena’s wrists had come very loose and she stroked

the diaphanous fabric helplessly, feeling the tiny jewels on the white

side cool to the touch of her fingers.

“How did you know you’d need all this stuff?” Elena asked, with

bruising practicality. “You didn’t know everything, but you seemed to

know enough.”

“Oh, I did research in bars and other places. I found a few people

who’d been here and had managed to get out again—or who had gotten

kicked out.” Damon’s wild grin grew even wilder. “At night while you

were asleep. At a little hidden store, I got those. ” He nodded at her veil,

and added, “You don’t have to wear that over your face or anything.

Press it to your hair and it will cling to it.”

Elena did so, wearing the gold side out. It fell to her heels. She

fingered her veil, already able to see the flirtatious possibilities in it, as

well as the dismissive ones. If only she could get this damned rope off

her wrists…

After a moment, Damon retreated back into the persona of the

imperturbable master and said, “For all our sakes, we ought to be strict

about these things. The slum lords and nobility who run this abominable

mess they call the Dark Dimension know that it’s only two days away

from revolution at any time, and if we add anything to the balance

they’re going to Make a Public Example of Us.”

“All right,” Elena said. “Here, hold my string and I’ll get on the

litter.”

But there wasn’t much point in the rope, not once they were both

sitting in the same litter. It was carried by four men—not big men, but

wiry ones, and all of the same height, which made for a smooth ride.

If Elena had been a free citizen, she would never have allowed

herself to be carried by four people whom (she assumed) were slaves. In

fact, she would have made a big noisy fuss over it. But that talk she’d

had with herself at the docks had sunk in. She was a slave, even if

Damon hadn’t paid anyone to buy her. She didn’t have the right to make

a big noisy fuss about anything. In this crimson, evil-smelling place she

could imagine that her fuss might even make problems for the litter

bearers themselves—make their owner or whoever ran the litter-bearing

business punish them, as if it were their fault.

Best Plan A for now: Keep Mouth Shut.

There was plenty to see anyway, now that they had passed on a

bridge over bad-smelling slums and alleys full of tumbledown houses.

Shops began to appear, at first heavily barred and made of unpainted

stone, then more respectable buildings, and then suddenly they were

winding their way through a bazaar. But even here the stamp of poverty

and weariness appeared on too many faces. Elena had expected, if

anything, a cold, black, antiseptic city with emotionless vampires and

fire-eyed demons walking the streets. Instead, everyone she saw looked

human, and they were selling things—from medicines to food and

drink—that vampires didn’t need.

Well, maybe the kitsune and the demons need them, Elena

reasoned, shuddering at the idea of what a demon might want to eat. On

the street corners were hard-faced, scantily clad girls and boys, and

tattered, haggard people holding pathetic signs: A MEMORY FOR A

MEAL.

“What do they mean?” Elena asked Damon, but he didn’t answer

her immediately.

“This is how the free humans of the city spend most of their time,”

he said. “So remember that, before you start going on one of your

crusades—”

Elena wasn’t listening. She was staring at one of the holders of

such a sign. The man was horribly thin, with a straggly beard and bad

teeth, but worse was his look of vacant despair. Every so often he would

hold out a trembling hand on which there was a small, clear ball, which

he balanced on his palm, muttering, “A summer’s day when I was

young. A summer’s day for a ten-geld piece.” As often as not there was

no one near when he said this.

Elena slipped off a lapis ring Stefan had given her and held it

toward him. She didn’t want to annoy Damon by getting out of the litter,

and she had to say, “Come here, please,” while holding the ring toward

the bearded man.

He heard, and came to the litter quickly enough. Elena saw

something move in his beard—lice, perhaps—and she forced herself to

stare at the ring as she said, “Take it. Quickly, please.”

The old man stared at the ring as if it were a banquet. “I don’t have

change,” he moaned, bringing up his hand and wiping his mouth with

his sleeve. He seemed about to drop to the ground unconscious. “I don’t

have change!”

“I don’t want change!” Elena said through the huge swelling that

had formed in her throat. “Take the ring. Hurry or I’ll drop it.”

He snatched it from her fingers as the litter bearers started forward

again. “May the Guardians bless you, lady,” he said, trying to keep up

with the litter bearer’s trot. “Hear me who may! May They bless you!”

“You really shouldn’t,” Damon said to Elena when the voice had

died away behind them. “He’s not going to get a meal with that, you

know.”

“He was hungry,” Elena said softly. She couldn’t explain that he

reminded her of Stefan, not just now. “It was my ring,” she added

defensively. “I suppose you’re going to say he’ll spend it on alcohol or

drugs.”

“No, but he won’t get a meal with it, either. He’ll get a banquet.”

“Well, so much the—”

“In his imagination. He’ll get a dusty orb with some old vampire’s

memory of a Roman feast, or someone from the city’s memory of a

modern one. Then he’ll play it over and over as he slowly starves to

death.”

Elena was appalled. “Damon! Quick! I have to go back and find

him—”

“You can’t, I’m afraid.” Lazily, Damon held up a hand. He had a

firm grip on her rope. “Besides, he’s long gone.”

“How can he do that? How could anyone do that?”

“How can a lung cancer patient refuse to quit smoking? But I agree

that those orbs can be the most addictive substances of all. Blame the

kitsune for bringing their star balls here and making them the most

popular form of obsession.”

“Star balls? Hoshi no tama?” Elena gasped.

Damon stared at her, looking equally surprised. “You know about

them?”

“All I know is what Meredith researched. She said that kitsune

were often portrayed with either keys”—she raised her eyebrows at

him—“or with star balls. And that myths say they can put some or all of

their power in the ball, so that if you find it, you can control the kitsune.

She and Bonnie want to find Misao’s or Shinichi’s star balls and have

control over them.”

“Be still, my unbeating heart,” Damon said dramatically, but the

next second he was all business. “Remember what that old guy said? A

summer’s day for a meal? He was talking about this. ” Damon picked up

the little marble that the old man had dropped on the litter and held it to

Elena’s temple.

The world disappeared.

Damon was gone. The sights and sounds—yes, and the smells—of

the bazaar were gone. She was sitting on green grass which rippled in a

slight breeze and she was looking at a weeping willow that bent down to

a stream that was copper and deep, deep green at once. There was some

sweet scent in the air—honeysuckle, freesia? Something delicious that

stirred Elena as she leaned back to gaze at picture-perfect white clouds

rolling in a cerulean sky.

She felt—she didn’t know how to say it. She felt young, but

somewhere in her mind she knew that she was actually younger than this

alien personality that had taken hold of her. Still, she felt excited that it

was springtime and every golden-green leaf, every springy little reed,

every weightless white cloud seemed to be rejoicing with her.

Then suddenly her heart was pounding. She had just caught the

sound of a footfall behind her. In one, springing joyous moment she was

on her feet, arms held out in the extremity of her love, the wild devotion

she felt for this…

…this young girl? Something inside the sphere user’s brain

seemed to fall back in bewilderment. Most of it, though, was taken up

with cataloguing the perfections of the girl who had crept up so lightly in

the waving grass: the clustering dark curls at her neck, the flashing green

eyes below arching brows, the smooth glowing skin of her cheeks as she

laughed with her lover, pretending to run away on feet as light as any

elf’s…!

Pursued and pursuer both fell down together on the soft carpet of

long grass…and then things quickly got so steamy that Elena, the distant

mind in the background, began wondering how on earth you made one

of these things stop. Every time she put her hand to her temple, groping,

she was caught and kissed breathless by…Allegra…that was the girl,

Allegra. And Allegra was certainly beautiful, especially through this

particular viewer’s eyes. The creamy soft skin of her…

And then, with a shock just as great as she’d felt when the bazaar

disappeared, it appeared again. She was Elena; she was riding on the

litter with Damon; there was a cacophony of sounds around her—and a

thousand different smells, too. But she was breathing hard and part of

her was still resounding with John—that had been his name—with

John’s love for Allegra.

“But I still don’t understand,” she almost keened.

“It’s simple,” Damon said. “You put a blank star ball of the size

you like to your temple and you think back to the time you want to

record. The star ball does the rest.” He waved off her attempted

interruption and leaned forward with mischief in those fathomless black

eyes of his. “Perhaps you got an especially warm summer day?” he said,

adding suggestively, “These litters do have curtains you can draw

closed.”

“Don’t be silly, Damon,” Elena said, but John’s feelings had

sparked her own, like flint and tinder. She didn’t want to kiss Damon,

she told herself sternly. She wanted to kiss Stefan. But since a moment

ago she had been kissing Allegra, it didn’t seem as strong an argument

as it could be.

“I don’t think,” she began, still breathless, as Damon reached for

her, “that this is a very good…”

With a smooth flick of the rope, Damon untied her hands

completely. He would have pulled it off both wrists, but Elena

immediately half-turned, supporting herself with that hand. She needed

the support.

In the circumstances, though, there was nothing more

meaningful—or more…exciting…than what Damon had done.

He hadn’t drawn the curtains, but Bonnie and Meredith were

behind them on their own litter, out of sight. Certainly out of Elena’s

mind. She felt warm arms around her, and instinctively nestled into

them. She felt a surge of pure love and appreciation for Damon, for his

understanding that she could never do this as a slave with a master.

We’re both of us unmastered, she heard in her head, and she

remembered that when cooling down most of her psychic abilities she

had forgotten to set the volume on low for this one. Oh, well, it might

just come in handy….

But we both enjoy worship, she replied telepathically, and felt his

laughter on her lips as he admitted the truth of it. There was nothing

sweeter in her life these days than Damon’s kisses. She could drift like

this forever, forgetting the outside world. And that was a good thing,

because she had the feeling that there was much depression in the

outside and not too much happiness. But if she could always come back

to this, this welcome, this sweetness, this ecstasy…

Elena jerked in the litter, throwing her weight back so fast that the

men carrying it almost fell in a heap.

“You bastard,” she whispered venomously. They were still

psychically entangled, and she was glad to see that through Damon’s

eyes she was like a vengeful Aphrodite: her golden hair lifting and

whipping behind her like a thunderstorm, her eyes shining violet in her

elemental fury.

And now, worst of all, this goddess turned her face away from

him. “Not one day,” she said. “You couldn’t even keep your promise for

a single day!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t Influence you, Elena!”

“Don’t call me that. We have a professional relationship now. I

call you ‘Master.’ You can call me ‘Slave’ or ‘Dog’ or whatever you

want.”

“If we have the professional relationship of master and slave,”

Damon said, his eyes dangerous, “then I can just order you to—”

“Try it!” Elena lifted her lips in what really wasn’t a smile. “Why

don’t you do that, and see just what happens?”

D amon clearly decided to throw himself on the mercy of the court, and

looked piteous and a little unbalanced, which he could easily do

whenever he wanted. “I really didn’t try to Influence you,” he repeated,

but then hastily added, “Maybe I can just change the subject for a

while—tell you more about the star balls.”

“That,” Elena said in her most frosty voice, “might be a rather

good idea.”

“Well, the balls make recordings directly from your neurons, you

see? Your neurons in your brain. Everything you’ve ever experienced is

there in your mind somewhere, and the ball just draws it out.”

“So you can always remember it and watch it over and over like a

movie, too?” Elena said, twiddling with her veil to shade her face from

him, and thinking that she would give a star ball to Alaric and Meredith

before their wedding.

“No,” Damon said, rather grimly. “ Not like that. For one thing, the

memory is gone from you—these are kitsune toys we’re talking about,

remember? Once the star ball has taken it from your neurons, you don’t

remember a thing about the event. Second, the ‘recording’ on the star

ball gradually fades—with use, with time, with some other factors

nobody understands. But the ball gets cloudier, and the sensations

weaker, until finally it’s just an empty crystal sphere.”