25 страница. Then Misao’s face lit up and she spoke

 

Then Misao’s face lit up and she spoke. “Spread her on the altar. You brought some of your half-breeds?”

 

The last was not so much a question as an excited exclamation.

 

“My experiments? Of course, darling. I told you so,” Shinichi replied and added, staring into the forest, “Two of you—er, men—and Old Faithful!” And he snapped his fingers. There were several minutes of confusion during which the humans around Bonnie were struck, kicked, thrown to the ground, trampled on, and crushed as they fought with the shadows. And then the things that had shambled forward before, shambled farther forward with Bonnie held in between them, dangling limply from each by a slim arm.

 

The half-breeds were something like men and something like trees with all the leaves stripped off them. If they had beenmade, it looked as if they had been made specifically to be grotesque and asymmetrical. One had a crooked, knobby left arm that reached almost to its feet, and a right arm that was thick, lumpy, and only waist-high.

 

They were hideous. Their skin was similar to the chitin-like skin of the insects, but much bumpier, with knotholes and burls and all the outward aspects of bark on their branches. They had a shaggy, unfinished look in places.

 

They were terrifying. The way their limbs were twisted; the way they walked, shambling forward like apes, the way their bodies ended on top with treelike caricatures of human faces, surmounted by a tangle of thinner branches sticking out at odd angles—they were calculated to look like creatures of nightmare.

 

And they were naked. They had nothing in place of clothes to disguise the ghastly deformities of their bodies.

 

And then Elena really knew what terror meant, as the two shambling malach carried the limp Bonnie to a sort of roughly hewn stump of tree like an altar, laid her on it and began to pluck at the many layers of her clothing, clumsily, pulling at them with sticklike fingers that broke off with little crackling sounds even as cloth tore. They didn’t seem to care that they broke their fingers off—as long as they accomplished their task.

 

And then they were using bits of torn cloth, even more clumsily, to tie Bonnie, spread-eagled, to four knobby posts snapped off their own bodies and hammered into the ground around the trunk with four powerful blows by the thick-armed one.

 

Meanwhile, from somewhere even farther away in the shadows, a third man-tree shuffled forward. And Elena saw that this one was, undeniably, unmistakably male.

 

For a moment Elena worried that Damon might lose it, go mad, turn around and attack both the were-foxes, revealing his true allegiance now. But his feelings about Bonnie had obviously changed since he had saved her at Caroline’s. He appeared perfectly relaxed beside Shinichi and Misao, sitting back and smiling, even saying something that made them laugh.

 

Suddenly something inside Elena seemed to plummet. This wasn’t a qualm. It was full-blown terror. Damon had never looked so natural, so in tune, sohappy with anyone as he did here with Shinichi and Misao. They couldn’t possibly have changed him, she tried to convince herself. Theycouldn’t have possessed him again so quickly, not without her, Elena, knowing it….

 

But when you showed him the truth, he was miserable, her heart whispered. Desperately miserable—miserably desperate. He might have reached for possession as a defiant alcoholic reaches for a bottle, wanting only forgetfulness. If she knew Damon, he had willingly invited the darkness back in.

 

He couldn’t stand to stand in the light, she thought. And so now, he’s able to laugh even at Bonnie’s suffering.

 

And where did that leave her? With Damon defected to the other side, no longer ally, but enemy? Elena began to tremble with anger and hatred—yes, and fear, too, as she contemplated her position.

 

All alone to struggle against three of the strongest enemies she could imagine, and their army of deformed, conscienceless killers? Not to mention Caroline, the cheerleader of spite?

 

As if to corroborate her fears, as if to show her how slim her chances really were, the tree she was clinging to seemed suddenly to let go of her, and for a moment Elena thought she would fall, spinning and screaming, all the way to the ground. Her handholds and footholds seemed to disappear all at once, and she only saved herself by a frantic—and painful—scrambling through serrated pine needles up to the grooved, dark bark.

 

You are a human girl now, my dear,the strong, resinous smell seemed to be telling her.And you are up to your neck in the Powers of the undead and of sorcery. Why fight it? You’ve lost before you’ve begun. Give in now and it won’t hurt so much.

 

If aperson had been telling her this, trying to hammer it in, the words might have sparked some kind of defiance from the flint of Elena’s character. But instead this was just a feeling that came over her, an aura of doom, a knowledge of the hopelessness of her cause, and the inadequacy of her weapons, that seemed to settle over her as gently and as inescapably as a fog.

 

She leaned her throbbing head against the trunk of the tree. She had never felt so weak, so helpless—or so alone, not since she had been a newly wakened vampire. She wanted Stefan. But Stefan hadn’t been able to beat these three, and because of that she might never see him again.

 

Something new was happening on the roof, she realized wearily. Damon was looking down at Bonnie on the altar, and his expression was petulant. Bonnie’s white face was staring up at the evening sky in determination, as if refusing any longer to weep or beg again.

 

“But…are all thehors d’oeuvres so predictable?” Damon asked, seeming genuinely bored.

 

You bastard, you’d turn on your best friend for amusement, Elena thought. Well, just you wait. But she knew the truth was that without him, she couldn’t even put together Plan A, much less fight against these kitsune, these were-foxes.

 

“You told me that in theShi no Shi, I would see acts of genuine originality,” Damon was going on. “Maidens hypnotized to cut themselves…”

 

Elena ignored his words. She concentrated all her energy on the thudding pain in the center of her chest. She felt as if she were drawing blood from her tiniest capillaries, from the far reaches of her body, and collecting it here at her center.

 

The human mind is infinite, she thought. It is as strange and as infinite as the universe. And the human soul…

 

The three youngest of the possessed began dancing around the spread-eagled Bonnie, singing in falsely sweet little-girl voices:

 

“You are going todie in here,

 

When you die inhere, outthere

 

They throwdirt right on your face!”

 

How delightful, Elena thought. Then she tuned back in to the drama unfolding on the roof. What she saw startled her. Meredith was now up on the widow’s walk, moving as if she were underwater—entranced. Elena had missed how she’d gotten there—was it by some sort of magic? Misao was facing Meredith, giggling. Damon was laughing, too, but in mocking disbelief.

 

“And you expect me to believe that if I givethis girl a pair of scissors…” he said, “she would actually cut her own—”

 

“Try and see for yourself,” Shinichi interrupted, with one of his languid gestures. He was leaning against the cupola in the middle of the widow’s walk, still trying to out-lounge Damon. “Didn’t you see our prizewinner, Isobel?You carried her all the way here—didn’t she ever try to speak?”

 

Damon held out a hand. “Scissors,” he said, and a dainty pair of nail scissors rested in his palm. It seemed that, as long as Damon had Shinichi’s magic key, the magic field around them would continue to obey him even in the real world. He laughed. “No, adult-size scissors, for gardening. The tongue’s made of strong muscles, not paper.”

 

What he held in his hand then were large pruning shears—definitely not toys for children. He hefted them, feeling their weight. And then, to Elena’s utter shock, he looked straight up at her in her treetop refuge, not needing to search for her there at all—and winked.

 

Elena could only stare back in horror.

 

He knew, she thought. He knew where I was all the time.

 

That was what he had been whispering to Caroline about.

 

It hadn’t worked—theWings of Redemption hadn’t worked, Elena thought, and it felt as if she were falling and would fall forever. I should have realized it would be no good. No matter what’s done to him, Damon will always be Damon. And now he’s offering me a choice: see my two best friends tortured and killed, or step forward and stop this horror by agreeing to his terms.

 

What could she do?

 

He had arranged the chess pieces brilliantly, she thought. The pawns on two different levels, so that even if Elena could somehow climb down to try to save Bonnie, Meredith would be lost. Bonnie was tied to four strong posts and guarded by Tree-Men. Meredith was closer, up on the roof, but to get her off Elena would have toget to her and then through Misao, Shinichi, Caroline, and Damon himself.

 

And Elena had to choose. Whether to step forward now, or be pushed forward by the anguish of one of the two who were almost a part of her.

 

She seemed to catch a faint strain of telepathy as Damon stood beaming there, and it said,This is the best night of my life.

 

You could always just jump,came the fog-like hypnotic whisper of annihilation once again.End the dead-end road you’re on. End your suffering. End all the pain…just like that.

 

“Now it’s my turn,” Caroline was saying, brushing past the twins to face Meredith herself. “It was supposed to be my choice in the first place. So it’s my turn now.”

 

Misao was laughing hysterically, but Meredith was already stepping forward, still in a trance.

 

“Oh, have it your own way,” Damon said. But he didn’t move, still staring curiously, as Caroline said to Meredith, “You’ve always had a tongue like an adder’s. Why don’t you make it forked for us—right here, right now? Before you cut it into pieces.”

 

Meredith held out her hand without a word, like an automaton.

 

Still with her eyes on Damon, Elena breathed in slowly. Her chest seemed to be going into spasms as it had when the sucker plants had wound their way around her and cut off her breath. But not even sensations in her own body could stop her.

 

How could I choose? she thought. Bonnie and Meredith—I love both of them.

 

And there’s nothing else to do, she realized numbly, the feeling draining from her hands and her lips. I’m not even sure if Damon can save both of them, even if I agree to…submit to him. These others—Shinichi, Misao, even Caroline—they want to see blood. And Shinichi not only controls trees, but just about everything in the Old Wood, including those monstrous Tree-Men. Maybe this time Damon has over-reached himself, taken on more than he could handle. He wanted me—but he went too far to get me. I can’t see any way out.

 

And then she did see. Suddenly everything fell into place and was brilliantly clear.

 

Sheknew.

 

Elena stared down at Bonnie, almost in a state of shock. Bonnie was looking at her, too. But there was no expectation of rescue in that small, triangular face. Bonnie had already accepted her fate: agony and death.

 

No,Elena thought, not knowing whether Bonnie could hear her.

 

Believe,she thought to Bonnie.

 

Not blindly, never blindly. But believe in what your mind tells you is the truth, and what your heart tells you is the right path. I would never let you go—or Meredith either.

 

I believe,Elena thought, and her soul was rocked by the force of it. She felt a sudden surge within herself, and she knew that it was time to go. One word was ringing in her mind as she stood and let go of her handholds on the tree trunk. And that one word echoed in her mind as she dove headfirst from her sixty-foot perch in the tree.

 

Believe.

 

 

As she fell, it all rushed through her mind.

 

The first time she had seen Stefan…she had been a different person then. Ice-cold outside, manic inside—or was it the other way around? Still numb from the death of her parents so long ago. Jaded by the world and by anything to do with boys…A princess in an icy tower…with a lust only for conquest, for power…until she’d seenhim.

 

Believe.

 

Then the world of the vampires…and Damon. And all the wicked wildness she’d found inside herself, all the passion. Stefan was her lynchpin, but Damon was the fiery breath beneath her wings. However far she went, Damon seemed to lure her on just a little farther. And she knew that one day it would be too far…for both of them. But for now, all she had to do was simple.

 

Believe.

 

And Meredith, and Bonnie, and Matt. She had changed relations with them, oh, most definitely. At first, not knowing what she had done to deserve friends like these three, she hadn’t even bothered to treat them as they deserved. Yet they had all stuck by her. And now shedid know how to appreciate them—knew that if it came to that, she would die for them.

 

Below, Bonnie’s eyes had followed her dive. The audience on the widow’s walk looked, too, but it was Bonnie’s face that she stared into: Bonnie startled and terrified and disbelieving and about to scream and realizing at the same time that no screaming would save Elena from a headlong dive to her death.

 

Bonnie, believe in me. I’ll save you.

 

I remember how to fly.

 

 

Bonnie knew that she was going to die.

 

She had had a clear premonition of it just before thosethings —the trees that moved like humans, with their hideous faces and their thick, knotted arms—had surrounded the little band of humans in the Old Wood. She had heard the howl of the black weir dog, turned, and just caught a glimpse of one vanishing in the glare of her flashlight. The dogs had a long history in Bonnie’s family: when one of them howled, a death was soon to come.

 

She’d guessed then that it would be hers.

 

But she hadn’t said anything, even when Dr. Alpert had said, “What in the name ofheaven wasthat?” Bonnie was practicing being brave. Meredith and Matt were brave. It was something built into them, an ability to keep going when any sane person would run away and hide. They both putthe group’s good ahead of their own. And of course Dr. Alpert was brave, not to mention strong, and Mrs. Flowers seemed to have decided that the teenagers were her own special charges to take care of.

 

Bonnie had wanted to show that she could be brave, too. She was practicing holding her head up and listening for things in the bushes, while simultaneously listening with her psychic senses for any sign of Elena. It was hard to juggle the two kinds of hearing. There was a lot to hear with her real ears; all kinds of quiet chucklings and whisperings from the bushes that didn’t belong there. But from Elena there wasn’t a sound, not even when Bonnie called her name over and over:Elena, Elena, Elena!

 

She’s human again, Bonnie had realized sadly, at last. She can’t hear me or make contact. Out of all of us, she’s the only one who didn’t miraculously escape.

 

And it was then that the first of the Tree-Men loomed up in front of the group of searchers. Like something out of a nursery-tale nightmare, it was a tree and then—suddenly—it was athing, a treelike giant that suddenly moved swiftly toward them, its upper branches bunching together to become long arms, and then everyone was screaming and trying to get away from it.

 

Bonnie would never forget how Matt and Meredith had tried to help her run then.

 

The Tree-Man wasn’t fast. But when they turned and ran from it they found that there was another one behind them. And more to the right and the left. They were surrounded.

 

And then, like cattle, like slaves, they were herded. Any of them that tried to resist the trees were slapped and cuffed by hard and sharp-thorned branches, and then, with a lithe branch wound around the neck, weredragged.

 

They’d been caught—but they hadn’t been killed. Instead they were being taken somewhere. It wasn’t hard to imagine why: in fact Bonnie could imagine a whole lot of different whys. It was just a matter of picking which was the scariest.

 

In the end, after what seemed like hours of forced walking, Bonnie began to recognize things. They were going back to the boardinghouse again. Or rather, they were going back to thereal boardinghouse for the first time. Caroline’s car was outside. The house was again lit from top to bottom, but there were dark windows here and there.

 

And their captors were waiting for them.

 

And now, after her outburst of weeping and pleading, she was trying to be brave once more.

 

When that boy with the strange hair had said that she would be the first, she’d understood exactly what he meant, and how she was going to die—and suddenly she wasn’t brave at all—inside. But she wouldn’t scream again.

 

She could just see the widow’s walk, and the sinister figures on it, but Damon hadlaughed when the Tree-Men had begun to pluck her clothes off. Now he waslaughing as Meredith held the garden shears. She wouldn’t beg him again, not when it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

 

And now she was on her back, with her arms and legs tied so she was helpless, clothed in strips and rags. She wanted them to kill her first, so she wouldn’t have to watch Meredith cut her own tongue to pieces.

 

Just as she felt a last scream of fury welling up inside her like a snake climbing a pole, she had seen Elena high above her in a white pine tree.

 

“Wings of the Wind,”Elena whispered as the ground rushed up toward her, very fast.

 

The wings unfolded instantly from somewhere inside Elena. They weren’t real, they spanned some forty feet and were made of golden gossamer, the color ranging from deepest Baltic amber at her back to ethereal pale citrine at the tips. They were almost still, barely rising and falling, but they held her up, the wind rushing under them, and they got her to exactly where she needed to go.

 

Not to Bonnie. That was what they would all be expecting. From her height, she just might be able to snatch Bonnie free, but she had no idea how to cut Bonnie’s bonds or whether she could lift off again.

 

Instead Elena swerved toward the widow’s walk at the last moment, snatched the pruning shears out of Meredith’s upraised hand, and then caught a handful of long, silky black-and-scarlet hair. Misao shrieked.And then…

 

Thatwas when Elena really needed some belief. So far she had really just been gliding, not flying. But now she needed uplift; she needed the wings towork …and once again, although there was no time, she was with Stefan, and feeling…

 

…the first time she had kissed him. Other girls might have waited until it was the other way around, letting the boy take the lead, but not Elena. Besides, at first Stefan had thought that all kissing meant was seducing prey….

 

…the first timehe had kissed her, understanding that it wasn’t a predatory relationship…

 

And now she needed toreally fly ….

 

I know I can….

 

But Misao was just so heavy—and Elena’s memory was faltering. The great golden wings trembled and became still. Shinichi was trying to climb a creeper to get to her, and Damon was holding Meredith motionless.

 

And, too late, Elena realized that it wasn’t going to work.

 

She was alone, and she couldn’t fight this way. Not against so many.

 

She was alone, and pain that made her want to shriek was lancing through her back. Misao was somehow making herself heavier, and in another minute she would be too heavy for Elena’s trembling wings to hold up.

 

She was alone, and like the rest of the humans, she was going to die—

 

And then, through the agony that was causing fine sweat to break out all over her body, she heard Stefan’s voice.

 

“Elena! Let go! Fall and I’ll catch you!”

 

How strange, Elena thought, as if in a dream. His love and panic had distorted his voice somehow—making him sound different. Making him sound almost like—

 

“Elena! I’mwith you!”

 

—like Damon.

 

Shaken out of her dream, Elena looked below her. And there was Damon, standing protectively in front of Meredith, looking up at her, with his arms held out.

 

He was with her.

 

“Meredith,” he went on, “girl, this is no time to be sleepwalking! Your friend needs you!Elena needs you!”

 

Slowly, dully, Meredith turned her face up. And Elena saw life and animation restored to it as her eyes focused on the trembling of the great golden wings.

 

“Elena!” she shouted, “I’m with you! Elena!”

 

How did she know to say that? The answer was—that she was Meredith—and Meredith always knew what to say.

 

And now the cry was being taken up by another voice: Matt’s.

 

“Elena!” he shouted, in a sort of acclamation. “I’m with you, Elena!”

 

And Dr. Alpert’s deep voice: “Elena! I’m with you, Elena!”

 

And Mrs. Flowers, surprisingly strong: “Elena! I’m with you, Elena!”

 

And even poor Bonnie: “Elena!We’re with you, Elena!”

 

While deep in her heart, the real Stefan whispered, “I’m with you, my angel.”

 

“We’re all with you, Elena!”

 

She didn’t drop Misao. It was as if the great golden wings had caught an updraft; in fact, they almost lifted her straight up, out of control—but somehow she managed to keep herself steady. She was still looking down and she saw the tears spill from her eyes and fall toward Damon’s outstretched arms. Elena didn’t know why she was crying, but part of it was sorrow for ever having doubted him.

 

Because Damon wasn’t just on her side. Unless she was wrong, he was willing to die for her—was courting death for her. He threw himself into the entangling creepers and vines, all reaching for Meredith or for Elena.

 

It had only taken an instant to get hold of Misao, but Shinichi was already leaping toward Elena, in fox form, lips drawn back, aiming to tear her throat out. These were no ordinary foxes. Shinichi was almost as big as a wolf—certainly the size of a large dog—and as vicious as a wolverine.

 

Meanwhile the entire widow’s walk burst into a maze of vines, creepers, and fibrous tendrils, and Shinichi was beinglifted by them. Elena didn’t know which way to dodge. She needed time, and she needed a clear shot out of here.

 

All Caroline was doing was screaming.

 

And then Elena saw her opening. A gap in the creepers that she threw herself at, knowing in her subconscious that she was throwing herself over the railing as well, and somehow keeping her hold on Misao’s hair. In fact, it must have been an extremely painful experience for the female kitsune as she swung back and forth like a pendulum below Elena.

 

The one glance Elena was able to give over her shoulder showed Damon, still moving faster than anything Elena had ever seen. He had Meredith in his arms now and was hurrying her through a gap that led to the cupula door. As soon as she stepped in, she appeared down on the ground and ran toward the altar where Bonnie was lying, only to slam into one of the Tree-Men. For a moment, as Damon glanced toward Elena, their gazes met and something electric passed between them. It made Elena tingle all over, that look did.

 

Then she refocused: Caroline was screaming again; Misao was using her whip to get a grip on Elena’s leg and was calling on Tree-Men to give her a lift. Elena needed to fly higher. She had no idea how she was controlling her golden gossamer wings, but nothing seemed to snarl them; and they obeyed her slightest whim as though she had always had them. The great trick was to not think ofhow to get somewhere, but just to imagine being there.

 

On the other hand, the Tree-Men were growing. It was like some childhood nightmare of giants, and at first it made Elena feel that it was she who was shrinking. But the hideous creatures were actually overtopping the house now, and their upper, snake-like branches slashed into her legs while Misao lashed out with her whip. Elena’s jeans were in shreds now. She swallowed a cry of pain.

 

I have to fly higher.

 

I can do it.

 

I’m going to save you all.

 

Ibelieve.

 

Faster than the swoop of a hummingbird, she was darting up in the clear air again, still holding Misao by her long black-and-red hair. And Misao was screaming, screams that Shinichi echoed even as he fought with Damon.

 

And then, just as she and Damon had planned, just as she and Damon hadhoped, Misao turned into her true form and Elena was holding a large and heavy, writhing vixen by the scruff of its neck.

 

There was a difficult moment while Elena got the balance right. She had to remember that there was more weight in back because Misao had six tails and was heaviest where a real fox would be lightest.

 

By then she had swooped back to her perch in the tree, and she stood there, able to look down on the scene below, the Tree-Men too slow to keep up. The plan had gone perfectly, except that Damon, of all people, had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing. Far from retreating into possession, he had fooled Shinichi and Misao beautifully—and Elena, too. Now, according to their plan he was supposed to be taking care of any innocent bystanders, letting Elena lure Shinichi on.

 

Instead something inside him seemed to have snapped; and he was methodically beating the human-shaped Shinichi’s head against the house, shouting: “Damn…you! Where…is…my…brother?”

 

“I—could kill you—right now—” Shinichi shouted back, but he was short of breath. He wasn’t finding Damon an easy opponent.

 

“Do it!” Damon returned immediately. “And then she”—pointing to the perching Elena—“will cut your sister’s throat!”

 

Shinichi’s contempt was scathing.

 

“You expect me to believe that a girl with an aura likethat willkill —”

 

There comes a time when you have to make a stand. And for Elena, blazing with defiance and glory, this was that time. She took a deep breath, begged the Universe’s forgiveness, and leaned down, positioning the pruning shears. Then she squeezed as hard as she could.

 

And a red-tipped black vixen’s tail fell twisting to the ground, while Misao shrieked in pain and rage. As the tail fell it writhed, and it lay in the middle of the clearing, squirming like a snake that wasn’t quite defeated yet. Then it became transparent and faded away.

 

That was when Shinichi really screamed, “Do you know what you’ve done, you ignorant bitch? I’ll bring this place down on top of you! I’ll tear you apart!”

 

“Oh, yes, of course you will. But first,” Damon spoke each word deliberately, “you have to get past me.”

 

Elena barely registered their words. It hadn’t been easy for her to squeeze those shears. It had meant thinking about Meredith with the shears in her own hands, and Bonnie lying on the altar, and Matt, earlier, writhing on the ground. And Mrs. Flowers, and the three lost little girls, and Isobel and—a great deal—about Stefan.