Contents 13 страница

to upset her listeners. But just as Elena was about to ask her to stop, at

least until she felt better, she continued.

“But despite all their care…someone…saw me anyway and

demanded my hand in marriage. Not Drohzne, he was just a furrier from

the Outlands, and I never saw him until three years ago. This was a lord,

a General, a demon with a terrible reputation—and my father refused his

demand. They came on us in the night. I was fourteen when it happened.

And that is how I became a slave.”

Elena found that she was feeling emotional pain directly from

Lady Ulma’s mind. Oh, my God, I’ve done it again, she thought,

hurriedly trying to tune down her psychic senses. “Please, you don’t

need to tell us this. Maybe another time…”

“I would like to tell you— you —so you will know what you have

done. And I would prefer to say it only once. But if you do not wish to

hear it—”

Politeness was warring with politeness here. “No, no, if you

want—go ahead. I—I just want you to know how sorry I am.” Elena

glanced at the doctor, who was patiently waiting by the table for her

with the brown bottle in his hands. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to

get my leg…healed?” She was aware that she’d said the last word

doubtfully, wondering how any one being could have the power to heal

Ulma like this. She was not surprised when he shook his head. “Or

stitched up, rather, while you talk, if you don’t mind,” she said.

It took several minutes to overcome Lady Ulma’s shock and

distress that she had left her savior waiting, but at last Elena was on the

table and the doctor was encouraging her to drink from the bottle, which

smelled like cherry cough syrup.

Oh, well, she might as well try the Dark Dimension version of

anesthetic—especially since the stitching was bound to hurt, Elena

thought. She took a sip from the bottle and felt the room reel around her.

She waved away the offer of a second sip.

Dr. Meggar undid Bonnie’s ruined scarf, and then began to cut off

her blood-soaked jeans leg above the knee.

“Well—you are so good to listen,” Lady Ulma said. “But I knew

you were good already. I will spare us both the painful details of my

slavery. Perhaps it’s enough to say that I was passed from one master to

another over the years, always a slave, always going down. At last, as a

joke, someone said, ‘Give her to Old Drohzne. He’ll squeeze the last use

out of her if anyone can.’”

“God!” Elena said, and hoped that everyone would attribute it to

the story and not to the bite of the cleansing solution the doctor was

swabbing over her swollen flesh. Damon was so much better at this, she

thought. I didn’t even realize how lucky I was before. Elena tried not to

wince as the doctor began to use his needle, but her grip on Meredith’s

hand tightened until Elena was afraid she was breaking bones. She tried

to ease the grip, but Meredith squeezed back hard. Her long, smooth

hand was almost like a boy’s, but softer. Elena was glad to be able to

squeeze as hard as she liked.

“My strength has been giving out on me lately,” Lady Ulma said

softly. “I thought it was that”—here she used a particularly crude

expression for her owner—“that was leading me to death. Then I

realized the truth.” All at once radiance changed her face, so much that

Elena could see what she must have looked like when she was in her

teens and so beautiful that a demon would demand her as a wife. “I

knew that new life stirred within me—and I knew that Drohzne would

kill it if he had the chance—”

She didn’t seem to recognize the expressions of astonishment and

horror on the three girl’s faces. Elena, however, had the feeling that she

was groping through a nightmare, on the edge of a black crevasse, and

that she would have to keep groping in the dark, around treacherous,

unseen fissures in the ice in the Dark Dimension until she reached Stefan

and got him free of this place. This casual reference to abomination

wasn’t the first of her steps around a crevasse, but it was the first she had

recognized and counted.

“You young women are very new here,” Lady Ulma said, as the

silence stretched and stretched. “I did not mean to say anything out of

place….”

“We’re slaves here,” Meredith replied, picking up a length of rope.

“I think the more we learn the better.”

“Your master—I’ve never seen anyone so quick to fight Old

Drohzne before. Many people clucked their tongues, but that was all

most dared to do. But your master—”

“ We call him Damon,” Bonnie put in pointedly.

It went right over Lady Ulma’s head. “Master Damon—do you

think he might keep me? After he pays the blood price to—to Drohzne’s

relatives, he will get first pick of all Drohzne’s property. I am one of the

few slaves he has not killed.” The hope in the woman’s face was almost

too painful for Elena to look at.

It was only then that she consciously realized how long it had been

since she’d seen Damon. How long should Damon’s business be taking?

She looked at Meredith anxiously.

Meredith understood exactly what the look meant. She shook her

head helplessly. Even if they had Lakshmi take them to the Meeting

Place, what could they do?

Elena bit back a wince of pain and smiled at Lady Ulma.

“Why don’t you tell us about when you were a girl?” she said.

D amon wouldn’t have thought a sadistic old fool who whipped a

woman to pieces for not being able to pull a cart meant for a horse

would have any friends. And Old Drohzne, indeed, may not have had

any. But that wasn’t the issue.

Neither, strangely, was murder the issue. Murder was an everyday

affair around the slums and the fact that Damon had initiated and won a

fight was of no surprise to the inhabitants of these dangerous alleyways.

The issue lay in making off with a slave. Or perhaps it went

deeper. The issue lay in how Damon treated his own slaves.

A crowd of men—all men, no women, Damon noticed—had

indeed gathered in front of the doctor’s building, and they did in fact

have torches.

“Mad vampire! Mad vampire on the loose!”

“Drive him out here for justice to be done!”

“Burn the place down if they won’t turn him out!”

“The elders say to bring him to them!”

This seemed to have the effect the crowd desired, clearing the

streets of the more decent people and leaving only the bloody-minded

sort who’d been hanging about at a loose end, and were only too glad of

a fight. Most of them, of course, were vampires themselves. Most of

them were fit vampires. But none of them, Damon thought, flashing a

diamond-bright smile around the circle that was closing in on him, had

the motivation of knowing that the lives of three young human girls

depended on him—and that one of them was the jewel in the crown of

humanity, Elena Gilbert.

If he, Damon, was torn to pieces in this fight, those three girls

would lead lives of hell and degradation.

However, even this logic didn’t seem to help him prevail as

Damon was kicked, bitten, head-butted, punched, and stabbed with

wooden daggers—the kind that slice vampire flesh. At first he thought

he had a chance. Several of the youngest and fittest vampires fell prey to

his cobra-quick strikes and his sudden strafes of Power. But the truth

was that there were simply too many of them, Damon thought, as he

snapped the neck of a demon whose two long tusks had already scored

his arm almost through the muscle. And here came a huge vampire,

clearly in training, with an aura that made Damon feel bile at the back of

his throat. That one went down with a foot in the face, but he didn’t stay

down; he came up, clinging to Damon’s leg and allowing several smaller

vampires with wooden daggers to dart in and hamstring him. Damon felt

black dismay as his legs went out from under him.

“Sunlight damn you,” he grated through a mouthful of blood as

another tusked, red-skinned demon punched him in the mouth. “Damn

you all to the lowest hells….”

It was no good. Dully, still fighting, still using great swaths of

Power to maim and kill as many as he could, Damon realized this. And

then everything became dreamlike and dazed—not like his dream of

Elena, whom he seemed to see constantly in his side-eye, weeping. But

dreamlike in a feverish, nightmare sense. He could no longer use his

muscles efficiently. His body was battered and even as he healed his

legs, another vampire scored a great cut across his back. He was feeling

more and more as if he were in a nightmare where he could not move

except in slow motion. At the same time, something in his brain was

whispering for him to rest. Just rest…and it would all be over.

Eventually, the greater numbers bore him down, and somebody

appeared with a stake.

“Good riddance to new rubbish,” the stake bringer said, his breath

reeking of stale blood, his leering face grotesque, as he used

leprous-looking fingers to open Damon’s shirt so as not to make a hole

in the fine black silk.

Damon spat on him and had his face stamped on hard in return.

He blacked out for a moment and then, slowly, came back to pain.

And noise. The gleeful crowd of vampires and demons, drunk on

cruelty, were all doing a stomping, rhythmic, improvised dance around

Damon, roaring with laughter as they thrust imaginary stakes, working

themselves into a frenzy.

That was when Damon realized that he was actually going to die.

It was a shocking realization, even though he’d known how much

more dangerous this world was than the one he’d recently left, and even

in the human world he had only escaped death by a hairsbreadth more

than once. But now he had no powerful friends, no weaknesses in the

crowd to exploit. He felt as if seconds were suddenly stretching into

minutes, each one of incalculable worth. What was important? Telling

Elena…

“Blind him first! Get that stick blazing!”

“I’ll take his ears! Someone help me hold his head!”

Telling Elena…something. Something…sorry…

He gave up. Another thought was trying to break into his

consciousness.

“Don’t forget to knock out his teeth! I promised my girlfriend a

new necklace!”

I thought I was prepared for this, Damon thought slowly, each

word coming separately. But…not so soon.

I thought I’d made my peace…but not with the one person who

mattered…yes, who mattered the most.

He didn’t give himself time to think about that subject further.

Stefan, he sent out on the most powerful but clandestine jettison of

Power he could manage in his foggy state. Stefan, hear me! Elena’s

come for you—she’ll save you! She has Powers that my death will let

loose. And I am…I am…s—

At that moment there was a stumbling in the dance around him.

Silence descended on the drunken revelers. A few of them hastily bowed

their heads or looked away.

Damon went still, wondering what could possibly have stopped the

frenzied crowd in the very midst of their revelry.

Someone was walking toward him. The newcomer had long bronze

hair that hung in separate unruly tangles down to his waist. He was

naked to the waist, too, exposing a body that the strongest demon might

envy. A chest that looked as if it had been carved out of gleaming bronze

stone. Exquisitely sculpted biceps. Abs—a perfect six pack. There was

not a spare ounce of fat on his entire tall leonine frame. He wore

unadorned black trousers with muscles rippling under them at every

step.

All along one bare arm he had a vivid tattoo of a black dragon

eating a heart.

Nor was he alone. He held no leash, but by his side was a

handsome and uncannily intelligent-looking black dog that stood at alert

attention every time he paused. It must have weighed close to two

hundred pounds, but there was not an ounce of fat on it, either.

And on one shoulder he carried a large falcon.

It wasn’t hooded as most hunting birds were on forays out of their

mews. It also wasn’t standing on anything padded. It gripped the bare

shoulder of the bronze young man, digging its three front talons into the

flesh and sending small streams of blood down his chest. He didn’t seem

to notice. There were similar, dried streams beside the fresh ones,

undoubtedly from previous journeys. In the back, a single talon made a

lonely red trail.

An absolute hush had fallen on the crowd and the last few demons

between the tall man and the bloody, supine figure on the ground

scrambled out of his way.

For a moment, the leonine man was still. He said nothing, did

nothing, emitted no trace of Power. Then he nodded at the dog, which

padded forward heavily and sniffed at Damon’s bleeding arms and face.

After that it sniffed at his mouth and Damon could see the hairs go up on

its body.

“Good dog,” said Damon dreamily as the moist, cool nose tickled

his cheek.

Damon knew this particular animal and he knew also that it did not

fit the popular stereotype of a “good dog.” Rather, it was a hellhound

who was used to taking vampires by the throat and shaking them until

their arteries spouted blood six feet high into the air.

That kind of thing could keep you so occupied that having a stake

slipped into your heart might seem an afterthought, Damon mused,

holding perfectly still.

“Arrêtez-le!” said the bronze-haired youth.

The dog obediently backed off, never taking its shining black eyes

off Damon’s, who never took his own eyes off it until it was some feet

away.

The bronze-haired youth glanced over the crowd briefly. Then he

said with no particular vehemence, “Laissez-le seul.” Clearly, to the

vampires no translation was necessary, and they began to edge away

immediately. The unlucky ones were those who didn’t edge fast enough

and were still around when the bronze young man took another leisurely

look about him. Everywhere he looked, he met downcast eyes and

cringing bodies, frozen in the act of edging but apparently turned to

stone now in an attempt not to attract attention.

Damon found himself relaxing. His Power was returning, allowing

him to make repairs. He realized that the dog was going from individual

to individual and sniffing at each one with interest.

When Damon was able to lift his head again, he smiled faintly at

the newcomer. “Sage. Think of the devil.”

The bronze man’s brief smile was grim. “You compliment me,

mon cher. You see? I’m blushing.”

“I ought to have known you might be here.”

“There is infinite space to wander, mon petit tyran. Even if I must

do it alone.”

“Ah, the pity. Tiny violins are playing—” Suddenly Damon

couldn’t do it anymore. He just couldn’t. Maybe it was because of being

with Elena before. Maybe it was because this hideous world depressed

him unutterably. But when he spoke again, his voice was entirely

different. “I never knew I could feel so grateful. You’ve saved five lives,

though you don’t know it. Though how you stumbled on us…”

Sage crouched down, looked at him with concern. “What is it that

has happened?” he said in a serious voice. “Is it that you hit your head?

You know: news travels fast here. I heard you arrived with a harem—”

“That’s true! He did!” Damon’s ears caught a bare whisper of

sound at the edge of the street where he’d been ambushed. “If we take

the girls hostage—torture them—”

Sage’s eyes met Damon’s briefly. Clearly, he had heard the

whisper as well. “Saber,” he said to the dog. “Just the speaker.” He

jerked his head, once, in the direction of the whisper.

Instantly, the black dog jumped forward, and faster than it took for

Damon to describe it in his own mind, had sunk his teeth into the throat

of the whisperer, flipped him over once, causing a distinctive crack, and

was bounding back, dragging the body between his legs.

The words: Je vous ai informé au sujet de ceci! blasted by on a

surge of Power that made Damon wince. And Damon thought, yes, he

did tell them before—but not what the consequences would be.

Laissez lui et ses amis dans la paix! Meanwhile, Damon was

slowly getting up, only too glad to accept Sage’s protection for himself

and his friends.

“Well that certainly should have done it,” he said. “Why not come

back and have a friendly drink with me?”

Sage peered at him as if he’d gone mad. “You know the answer to

that is no.”

“Why not?”

“I told you: no.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“The reason I will not come back for a friendly drink… mon

ange …is that we are not friends.”

“We pulled some pretty scams together.”

“ Il y a longtemps. ” Abruptly, Sage took one of Damon’s hands.

There was a deep and bloody scratch on it, which Damon hadn’t got

around to healing. Under Sage’s gaze it closed, the flesh turned pink,

and it healed.

Damon let Sage continue to hold the hand for a moment, and then,

not ungently, retrieved it.

“Not such a very long time ago,” he said.

“Away from you?” A sarcastic smile formed on Sage’s lips. “We

count time very differently, you and I, mon petit tyran. ”

Damon was full of befuddled cheer. “What’s one drink?”

“Along with your harem?”

Damon tried to picture Meredith and Sage together. His mind

balked. “But you’ve made yourself responsible for them anyway,” he

said flatly. “And the truth is that none of them are mine. I give my word

on that.” He felt a twinge when he thought about Elena, but his word

was true.

“Responsible for them?” Sage seemed to be reasoning it out. “You

pledged to save them, then. But I only inherit your pledge if you die. But

if you die…” The tall man made a helpless gesture.

“You have to live, to save Stefan and Elena and the others.”

“I’d say no, but that would make you unhappy. So I’ll say yes—”

“And if you don’t perform, I swear I’ll come back to haunt you.”

Sage regarded him for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever been

accused of being unable to perform before,” he said. “But of course that

was before I became un vampire. ”

Yes, Damon thought, the meeting of the “harem” and Sage was

bound to be interesting. At least it would be if the girls discovered who

Sage really was.

But maybe no one would tell them.

E lena had seldom felt such relief as she did when she heard Damon’s

knock at Dr. Meggar’s door.

“What happened at the Meeting Place?” she asked.

“I never made it there.” Damon explained about the ambush, while

the others covertly studied Sage with varying degrees of approval,

gratitude, or sheer lust. Elena realized that she’d had too much Black

Magic when she felt ready to pass out at several points—although she

was sure that the wine had helped Damon to survive a mob attack which

might otherwise have killed him.

They, in turn, explained Lady Ulma’s story as briefly as possible.

The woman was looking white and shaken by the end.

“I do hope,” she said timidly to Damon, “that when you inherit Old

Drohzne’s property”—she paused to swallow—“that you’ll decide to

keep me. I know the slaves you brought with you are beautiful and

young…but I can make myself very useful as a needlewoman and such.

It’s just my back that’s lost its strength, not my mind….”

Damon was perfectly still for a moment. Then he walked over to

Elena, who happened to be closest to him. He reached up, unclasped the

last loop of rope that had been trailing from Elena’s wrist, and threw it

hard across the room. It whipped and wiggled like a snake. “Anyone else

wearing one can do the same thing, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

“Except the throwing,” Meredith said quickly, seeing the doctor’s

eyebrow clashing as he looked at the many breakable glass beakers

stacked along the walls. But she and Bonnie lost no time in losing any

final vestige of rope that was still trailing.

“I’m afraid mine are…permanent,” Lady Ulma said, pulling the

fabric away from her wrists to expose the welded-on iron bracelets. She

looked ashamed at being unable to obey her new master’s first

command.

“Do you mind a moment of cold? I have enough Power to freeze

them so they’ll shatter,” Damon said.

There was a soft sound from Lady Ulma. Elena thought she had

never heard such desperation in any one human noise. “I could stand in

snow to my neck for a year to get these awful things off,” the Lady said.

Damon put his hands on either side of one bracelet and Elena could

feel the rush of Power that emanated from him. There was a sharp

cracking sound. Damon moved his hands and came up with two separate

pieces of metal.

Then he did it again, on the other side.

The look in Lady Ulma’s eyes made Elena feel more humble than

proud. She had saved one woman from terrible degradation. But how

many more remained? She would never know, or be able to save them

all if she found out. Not with her Power in the state it was now.

“I think Lady Ulma really ought to get some rest,” Bonnie said,

rubbing her own forehead under tumbled strawberry curls. “And Elena,

too. You should have seen how many stitches her leg took, Damon. But

what do we do, go look for a hotel?”

“Use my house,” said Dr. Meggar, one eyebrow up and one down.

Obviously, he had become enmeshed in this story, swept along by its

sheer power and beauty—and brutality. “All I ask is that you don’t

destroy anything, and that if you see a frog, don’t kiss it, and don’t kill

it. There are plenty of blankets and chairs and couches.”

He wouldn’t take a single link from the heavy gold chain Damon

had brought to use as income in exchange.

“I…by rights I should help you all get ready for bed,” Lady Ulma

murmured faintly to Meredith.

“You’re the worst hurt of all; you should get the best bed,”

Meredith replied tranquilly. “And we will help you get into it.”

“The most comfortable bed…that would be in my daughter’s old

room.” Dr. Meggar fumbled with a ring of keys. “She married a

porter—how I hated to see her go. And this young lady, Miss Elena, can

have the old bridal chamber.”

For an instant Elena’s heart was torn by conflicting emotions. She

was afraid—yes, she was very sure it was fear she felt—that Damon

might sweep her up in his arms and make for the bridal suite with her.

And on the other hand…

Just then Lakshmi looked up at her uncertainly. “Do you want me

to leave?” she asked.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” Elena asked in turn.

“The street, I guess. I usually sleep in a barrel.”

“Stay here. Come with me; a bridal bed sounds big enough for two

people. You’re one of us, now.”

The look Lakshmi gave her was one of sheer thunderstruck

gratitude. Not at being given a place to stay, Elena understood. For the

statement, “You’re one of us, now.” Elena could feel that Lakshmi had

never been “one of” any group before.

Things were quiet until almost “dawn” the next “day,” as the city’s

inhabitants called it, although the light hadn’t varied all night.

This time a different sort of crowd had gathered outside the

doctor’s complex. It was mostly made up of elderly men wearing

threadbare but clean robes—but there were a few old women, too. They

were led by a silver-haired man who had a strange air of dignity.

Damon, with Sage as backup, went outside the doctor’s complex

and spoke to them.

Elena was dressed but still upstairs in the quiet bridal suite.

Dear Diary,

Oh, God, I need help! Oh, Stefan—I need you. I need you to

forgive me. I need you to keep me sane. Too much time around Damon

and I’m completely emotional, ready to kill him or to…or to—I don’t

know. I don’t know!!! We’re like flint and tinder together—God! We’re

like gasoline and a flamethrower! Please hear me and help me and save

me…from myself. Every time he even says my name…

“Elena.”

The voice behind Elena made her jump. She slammed the diary

shut and turned around.

“Yes, Damon?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh, great. Fine. Even my leg is b—I mean, I’m fine all over. How

are you feeling?”

“I’m…well enough,” he said, and he smiled—and it was a real

smile, not a snarl twisted into something else at the last second, or an

attempt to manipulate. It was just a smile, if a rather worried and sad

one.

Elena somehow didn’t notice the sadness until she remembered it

later. She simply suddenly felt that she weighed nothing; that if she lost

grip on herself she could be miles high before anyone could stop

her—miles away, maybe even as far as this insane place’s moons.

She managed a shaky smile of her own at him. “That’s good.”

“I came to talk to you,” he said, “but…first—”

In another moment, somehow, Elena was in his arms.

“Damon—we can’t keep on…” She tried to pull away gently. “We

really can’t keep doing this, you know.”

But Damon didn’t let go of her. There was something in the way

he held her that half terrified her, and half made her want to cry with joy.

She forced back the tears.

“It’s all right,” Damon said softly. “Go ahead and cry. We’ve got a

situation on our hands.”

Something in his voice frightened Elena. Not in the half-joyful

way she’d been fearful a minute ago, but entirely frightened.

It’s because he’s afraid, she thought suddenly in wonderment. She

had seen Damon angry, wistful, cold, mocking, seductive—even

subdued, ashamed—but she had never seen him afraid of anything. She

could hardly get her mind around the concept. Damon…frightened…for

her.

“It’s because of what I did yesterday, isn’t it?” she asked. “Are

they going to kill me?” She was surprised at how calmly she said it. She

felt nothing except a vague distress and the desire to make Damon not

afraid anymore.

“No!” He held her at arm’s length, staring. “At least not without

killing me and Sage—and all the people in this house, too, if I know

them.” He stopped, seeming out of breath—which was impossible,

Elena reminded herself. He’s playing for time, she thought.

“But that’s what they want to do,” she said. She didn’t know why

she was so certain. Maybe she was picking up something telepathically.

“They have…made threats,” Damon said slowly. “It’s not the case

of Old Drohzne really; I guess there are murders around here all the time

and winner takes all. But apparently overnight word of what you did has

been spreading. Slaves in nearby estates are refusing to obey their

masters. This entire quarter of the slums is in turmoil—and they’re

afraid of what will happen if other sectors hear about it. Something has

to be done as soon as possible or the whole Dark Dimension may just

explode like a bomb.”

Even as Damon spoke, Elena could hear the echoes of what he’d

been told by the assembly who had come to Dr. Meggar’s door. They

had been afraid, too.

Maybe this could be the start of something important, Elena

thought, her mind soaring away from her own small problems. Even

death wouldn’t be too high a price to pay to free these wretched people