Contents 7 страница. longer any sign of a door or gate behind them

longer any sign of a door or gate behind them. The boy had plenty to drink but he

was left forever in the dark and cold and his tears froze upon his cheeks. The girl

had the beautiful flower to look at but nothing to eat or drink and so under the

glowing yellow sun she wasted away.

Bonnie shivered, the delicious shiver of a reader who had gotten what she

expected. The fairy tale, with its moral of “don’t be greedy” was like the stories

she’d heard from the Red and the Blue Fairy Books when she was a child sitting on

her grandmother’s lap.

She missed Elena and Meredith, badly. She had a story to tell, but no one to tell it

to.

“S tefan. Stefan!” Elena had been too nervous to stay out of the bedroom for

longer than the five minutes it had taken to show herself to the sheriffs. It was

Stefan the officers really wanted and couldn’t find, not seeming to consider that

someone might backtrack and hide in a room that had already been searched.

And now Elena couldn’t get a response out of Stefan, who was locked in an

embrace with Meredith, mouth pressed tightly over the two little wounds he’d made.

Elena had to shake him by the shoulders, to shake both of them, in order to get any

response.

Then Stefan reared back suddenly, but held on to Meredith, who would otherwise

have fallen. He hastily licked blood from his lips. For once, though, Elena wasn’t

focused on him, but on her friend—her friend whom she’d allowed to do this.

Meredith’s eyes were shut, but they had dark, almost plum-colored circles under

them. Her lips were parted, and her dark cloud of hair was wet where tears had

fallen into it.

“Meredith? Merry?” The old nickname just slipped out of Elena’s lips. And then,

when Meredith gave no sign of having heard her: “Stefan, what’s wrong?”

“I Influenced her at the end to sleep.” Stefan lifted Meredith and put her on the

bed.

“But what happened? Why is she crying—and what’s wrong with you?” Elena

couldn’t help but notice that despite the healthy flush on Stefan’s cheeks his eyes

were shadowed.

“Something I saw—in her mind,” Stefan said briefly, pulling Elena behind his

back. “Here comes one of them. Stay there.”

The door opened. It was the male sheriff, who was red-faced and panting, and

who had clearly just lapped himself, returning to this room after starting from it to

search the entire first floor.

“I have them all in a room—all but the fugitive,” the sheriff said into a large black

mobile. The female sheriff made some brief reply. Then the red-faced male turned

to speak to the teenagers. “Now what’s going to happen is that I’m going to search

you ”—he nodded at Stefan—“while my partner searches you two. ” His head

jerked, ear-first, at Meredith. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

“Nothing that you could understand,” Stefan replied coolly.

The sheriff looked as if he couldn’t believe what had just been said. Then,

suddenly, he looked as if he could, and did, and he took a step toward Meredith.

Stefan snarled.

The sound made Elena, who was right behind him, jump. It was the low savage

snarl of an animal protecting its mate, its pack, its territory.

The ruddy-faced policeman suddenly looked pale and panicked. Elena guessed

that he was looking at a mouth full of teeth much sharper than his own, and tinged

with blood as well.

Elena didn’t want this to turn into a pi—that was, a…snarling match.

As the sheriff gabbled to his partner, “We may need some of them silver bullets

after all,” Elena poked her beloved, who was now making a noise like a very big

buzz saw that she could feel in her teeth, and whispered, “Stefan, Influence him!

The other one’s coming, and she may already have called for backup.”

At her touch, Stefan stopped making the sound, and when he turned she could

see his face changing from that of a savage animal baring its teeth back to his own

dear, green-eyed self. He must have taken a lot of blood from Meredith, she

thought, with a flutter in her stomach. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

But there was no denying the after-effects. Stefan turned back to the male sheriff

and said crisply, “You will go into the front hallway. You will remain there, silent, until

I tell you to move or speak.” Then, without looking up to see if the officer was

obeying or not, he tucked the blankets more tightly around Meredith.

Elena was watching the sheriff, though, and she noticed that he didn’t hesitate an

instant. He made an about-face and marched off to the front foyer.

Then Elena felt safe enough to look at Meredith again. She couldn’t find anything

wrong in her friend’s face, except her unnatural pallor, and those violet shadows

around her eyes.

“Meredith?” she whispered.

No response. Elena followed Stefan out of the room.

She had just made it to the foyer when the female sheriff ambushed them.

Coming down the stairs, pushing the fragile Mrs. Flowers before her, she shouted,

“On the ground! All of you!” She gave Mrs. Flowers a hard shove forward. “Get

down now!”

When Mrs. Flowers almost fell sprawling on the floor, Stefan leaped and caught

her, and then turned back to the other woman. For a moment Elena thought that he

would snarl again, but instead, in a voice tight with self-control, he said, “Join your

partner. You can’t move or speak without my permission.”

He took the shaken-looking Mrs. Flowers to a chair on the left side of the foyer.

“Did that—person—hurt you?”

“No, no. Just get them out of my house, Stefan, dear, and I’ll be most grateful,”

Mrs. Flowers replied.

“Done,” Stefan said softly. “I’m sorry we’ve caused you so much trouble—in your

own home.” He looked at each of the sheriffs, his eyes piercing. “Go away and

don’t come back. You have searched the house, but none of the people you were

looking for were here. You think further surveillance will yield nothing. You believe

that you would do more good by helping the—what was it? Oh, yes, the mayhem in

the town of Fell’s Church. You will never come here again. Now go back to your car

and leave.”

Elena felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She could feel the

Power behind Stefan’s words.

And, as always, it was satisfying to see cruel or angry people become docile

under the power of a vampire’s Influence. These two stood for another ten

seconds quite still, and then they simply walked out the front door.

Elena listened to the sound of the sheriff’s car driving away and such a strong

feeling of relief washed over her that she almost collapsed. Stefan put his arms

around her, and Elena hugged him back tightly, knowing that her heart was

pounding. She could feel it in her chest and her fingertips.

It’s all over. All done now, Stefan thought to her and Elena suddenly felt

something different. She felt pride. Stefan had simply taken charge and chased the

officers away.

Thank you, she thought to Stefan.

“I guess we’d better get Matt out of the root cellar,” she added.

Matt was unhappy. “Thanks for hiding me—but do you know how long that was?” he

demanded of Elena when they were upstairs again. “And no light except what was

in that little star ball. And no sound—I couldn’t hear a thing down there. And what is

this?” He held out the long, heavy wooden staff, with its strangely shaped, spiked

ends.

Elena felt sudden panic. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?” She snatched up

Matt’s hands, letting the long staff fall to the ground. But Matt didn’t seem to have a

single scratch.

“I wasn’t dumb enough to hold it by the ends,” he said.

“Meredith did, for some reason,” Elena said. “Her palms were covered with

wounds. And I don’t even know what it is.”

“I do,” Stefan said quietly. He picked up the stave. “But it’s Meredith’s secret

really. I mean it’s Meredith’s property,” he added hastily as all eyes fixed on him at

the word secret.

“Well, I’m not blind,” Matt said in his frank, straightforward way, flipping back

some fair hair in order to look more closely at the thing. He raised blue eyes to

Elena. “I know what it smells like, which is vervain. And I know what it looks like with

all those silver and iron spikes coming out of the sharp ends. It looks like a giant

staff for exterminating every kind of Godawful Hellacious monster that walks on this

earth.”

“And vampires, too,” Elena added hastily. She knew that Stefan was in a funny

mood and she definitely didn’t want to see Matt, for whom she still cared deeply,

lying on the floor with a crushed skull. “And even humans—I think these bigger

spikes are for injecting poison.”

“Poison?” Matt looked at his own palms hastily.

“You’re okay,” Elena said. “I checked you, and besides it would be a very quickacting

poison.”

“Yes, they would want to take you out of the fight as fast as possible,” Stefan

said. “So if you’re alive now, you’re likely to stay that way. And now, this Godawful

Hellacious monster just wants to get back up to bed.” He turned to go to the attic.

He must have heard Elena’s swift, involuntarily indrawn breath, because he turned

around and she could see that he was sorry. His eyes were dark emerald, sad but

blazing with unused Power.

I think we’ll have a late morning, Elena thought, feeling pleasurable thrills ripple

through her. She squeezed Stefan’s hand, and felt him return the pressure. She

could see what he had in mind; they were close enough and he was projecting

pretty clearly what he wanted—and she was as eager to get upstairs as he was.

But at that moment Matt, eyes on the wickedly spiked staff, said, “Meredith has

something to do with that?”

“I should never have said anything at all about it,” Stefan replied. “But if you want

to know more, you’d really better ask Meredith herself. Tomorrow.”

“All right,” Matt said, finally seeming to understand. Elena was way ahead of him.

A weapon like that was —could only be—for killing all sorts of monsters walking the

earth. And Meredith—Meredith who was as slim and athletic as a ballerina with a

black belt, and oh! Those lessons! The lessons that Meredith had always put off if

the girls were doing something at that exact moment, but that she always somehow

managed to make time for.

But a girl could hardly be expected to carry a harpsichord around with her and

nobody else had one. Besides, Meredith had said she hated to play, so her BFFs

had let it go at that. It was all part of the Meredith mystique.

And riding lessons? Elena would bet some of them were genuine. Meredith would

want to know how to make a quick escape mounting anything available.

But if Meredith wasn’t practicing for a little light music in the drawing room, or for

starring in a Hollywood Western—then what would she have been doing?

Training, Elena guessed. There were a lot of dojos out there, and if Meredith had

been doing this since that vampire attacked her grandfather she must be pretty

darn good. And when we’ve fought grisly things, whose eyes have ever been on

her, a soft gray shadow that kept out of the limelight? A lot of monsters probably got

knocked out but good.

The only question that needed to be answered was why Meredith hadn’t shown

them the Godawful Hellacious monster staker or used it in any fights—say against

Klaus—until now. And Elena didn’t know, but she could ask Meredith herself.

Tomorrow, when Meredith was up. But she trusted that it had some simple answer.

Elena tried to stifle a yawn in a ladylike way. Stefan? she asked. Can you get us

out of here—without picking me up—and to your room?

“I think we’ve all had enough stress this morning,” Stefan said in his own gentle

voice. “Mrs. Flowers, Meredith is in the first-floor bedroom—she’ll probably sleep

very late. Matt—”

“I know, I know. I don’t know where the schedule went but I might as well make it

my night.” Matt presented an arm to Stefan.

Stefan looked surprised. Darling, you can never have too much blood, Elena

thought to him, seriously and straightforwardly.

“Mrs. Flowers and I will be in the kitchen,” she said aloud.

When they were there, Mrs. Flowers said, “Don’t forget to thank Stefan for

defending the boardinghouse for me.”

“He did it because it’s our home,” Elena said, and went back into the hall, where

Stefan was thanking a flushing Matt.

And then Mrs. Flowers called Matt into the kitchen and Elena found herself

swooped up in lithe, hard arms and then they were gaining altitude rapidly, with the

wood staircase emitting little creaks and groans of protest. And finally they were in

Stefan’s room and Elena was in Stefan’s arms.

There was no better place to be, or anything else either of them really wanted

now, Elena thought and turned her face up as Stefan turned his down and they

began with a long slow kiss. And then the kiss went molten, and Elena had to cling

to Stefan, who was already holding her with arms that could have cracked granite,

but only squeezed her exactly as tightly as she wanted them to.

E lena, sleeping serenely with one hand locked onto Stefan’s, knew she was having

an extraordinary dream. No, not a dream—an out-of-body experience. But it wasn’t

like her previous out-of-body visits to Stefan in his cell. She was skimming through

the air so quickly that she couldn’t really make out what was below her.

She looked around and suddenly, to her astonishment, another figure appeared

beside her.

“Bonnie!” she said—or rather tried to say. But of course there was no sound.

Bonnie looked like a transparent edition of herself. As if someone had created her

out of blown glass, and then put in just the faintest tint of color in her hair and eyes.

Elena tried telepathy. Bonnie?

Elena! Oh, I miss you and Meredith so much! I’m stuck here in a hole —

A hole? Elena could hear the panic in her own telepathy. It made Bonnie wince.

Not a real hole. A dive. An inn, I guess, but I’m locked in and they only feed me

twice a day and take me to the toilet once—

My God! How did you get there?

Well… Bonnie hesitated. I guess it was my own fault.

It doesn’t matter! How long have you been there, exactly?

Um, this is my second day. I think.

There was a pause. Then Elena said, Well, a couple of days in a bad place can

seem like forever.

Bonnie tried to make her case clearer. It’s just that I’m so bored and lonely. I

miss you and Meredith so much! she repeated.

I was thinking of you and Meredith, too, Elena said.

But Meredith’s there with you, isn’t she? Oh my God, she didn’t fall, too?

Bonnie blurted.

No, no! She didn’t fall. Elena couldn’t decide whether to tell Bonnie about

Meredith or not. Maybe not just yet, she thought.

She couldn’t see what she was rushing toward, although she could feel that they

were slowing down. Can you see anything?

Hey, yeah, below us! There’s a car! Should we go down?

Of course. Can we hold hands?

They found that they couldn’t, but that just trying to kept them closer together. In

another moment they were sinking through the roof of a small car.

Hey! It’s Alaric! Bonnie said.

Alaric Saltzman was Meredith’s engaged-to-be-engaged boyfriend. He was

about twenty-three now, and his sandy-blond hair and hazel eyes hadn’t changed

since Elena had seen him almost ten months ago. He was a parapsychologist at

Duke, going for his doctorate.

We’ve been trying to get hold of him for ages, Bonnie said.

I know. Maybe this is the way we’re supposed to contact him.

W here is he supposed to be again?

Some weird place in Japan. I forget what it’s called, but look at the map on the

passenger seat.

She and Bonnie intermingled as they did, their ghostly forms passing right

through each other.

Unmei no Shima: The Island of Doom, was written at the top of an outline of an

island. The map beside him had a large red X on it with the caption: The Field of

Punished Virgins.

The what? Bonnie asked indignantly. What’s that mean?

I don’t know. But look, this fog is real fog. And it’s raining. And this road is

terrible.

Bonnie dove outside. Ooh, so weird. The rain’s going right through me. And I

don’t think this is a road.

Elena said, Come back in and look at this. There aren’t any other cities on the

island, just a name. Dr. Celia Connor, forensic pathologist.

What’s a forensic pathologist?

I think, Elena said, that they investigate murders and things. And they dig up

dead people to find out why they died.

Bonnie shuddered. I don’t think I like this very much.

Neither do I. But look outside. This was a village once, I think.

There was almost nothing left of the village. Just a few ruins of wooden buildings

that were obviously rotting, and some tumbledown, blackened stone structures.

There was one large building with an enormous bright yellow tarp over it.

When the car reached this building, Alaric skidded to a stop, grabbed the map

and a small suitcase, and dashed through the rain and mud to get under cover.

Elena and Bonnie followed.

He was met near the entrance by a very young black woman, whose hair was cut

short and sleek around her elfin face. She was small, not even Elena’s height. She

had eyes dancing with excitement and white, even teeth that made for a Hollywood

smile.

“Dr. Connor?” Alaric said, looking awed.

Meredith isn’t going to like this, Bonnie said.

“Just Celia, please,” the woman said, taking his hand. “Alaric Saltzman, I

presume.”

“Just Alaric, please—Celia.”

Meredith really isn’t going to like this, Elena said.

“So you’re the spook investigator,” Celia was saying below them. “Well, we need

you. This place has spooks—or did once. I don’t know if they’re still here or not.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“More like sad and morbid. Sad and weird and morbid. I’ve excavated all sorts of

ruins, especially those where there’s a chance of genocide. And I’ll tell you: This

island is unlike any place I have ever seen,” Celia said.

Alaric was already pulling things from his case, a thick stack of papers, a small

camcorder, a notebook. He turned on the camcorder, and looked through the

viewfinder, then propped it up with some of the papers. When he apparently had

Celia in focus, he grabbed the notebook too.

Celia looked amused. “How many ways do you need to take down information?”

Alaric tapped the side of his head and shook it sadly. “As many as possible.

Neurons are beginning to go.” He looked around. “You’re not the only one here,

are you?”

“Except for the janitor and the guy who ferries me back to Hokkaido, yes. It

started out as a normal expedition—there were fourteen of us. But one by one, the

others have died or left. I can’t even re-bury the specimens—the girls—we’ve

excavated.”

“And the people who left or died from your expedition—”

“Well, at first people died. Then that and the other spooky stuff made the rest

leave. They were frightened for their lives.”

Alaric frowned. “Who died first?”

“Out of our expedition? Ronald Argyll. Pottery specialist. He was examining two

jars that were found—well, I’ll skip that story until later. He fell off a ladder and

broke his neck.”

Alaric’s eyebrows went up. “That was spooky?”

“From a guy like him, who’s been in the business for almost twenty years—yes.”

“Twenty years? Maybe a heart attack? And then off the ladder—boom.” Alaric

made a downward gesture.

“Maybe that’s the way it was. You may be able to explain all our little mysteries

for us.” The chic woman with the short hair dimpled like a tomboy. She was dressed

like one too, Elena realized: Levi’s and a blue and white shirt with the sleeves rolled

up over a white camisole.

Alaric gave a little start, as if he’d realized he was guilty of staring. Bonnie and

Elena looked at each other over his head.

“But what happened to all the people who lived on the island in the first place?

The ones who built the houses?”

“Well, there never were that many of them in the first place. I’m guessing the

place may even have been named the Island of Doom before this disaster my team

was investigating. But as far as I could find out it was a sort of war—a civil war.

Between the children and the adults.”

This time when Bonnie and Elena looked at each other, their eyes were both

wide. Just like home —Bonnie began, but Elena said, Sh. Listen.

“A civil war between kids and their parents?” Alaric repeated slowly. “Now that is

spooky.”

“Well, it’s a process of elimination. You see, I like graves, constructed or just

holes in the ground. And here, the inhabitants don’t appear to have been invaded.

They didn’t die of famine or drought—there was still plenty of grain in the granary.

There were no signs of illness. I’ve come to believe that they all killed one

another —parents killing children; children killing parents.”

“But how can you tell?”

“You see this square-ish area on the periphery of the village?” Celia pointed to

an area on a larger map than Alaric’s. “That’s what we call The Field of Punished

Virgins. It’s the only place that has carefully constructed actual graves, so it was

made early in what became a war. Later, there was no time for coffins—or no one

who cared. So far we’ve excavated twenty-two female children—the eldest in her

late teens.”

“Twenty-two girls? All girls?”

“All girls in this area. Boys came later, when coffins were no longer being made.

They’re not as well preserved, because the houses all burned or fell in, and they

were exposed to weathering. The girls were carefully, sometimes elaborately,

buried; but the markings on their bodies indicate that they were subjected to harsh

physical punishment at some time close to their deaths. And then—they had stakes

driven through their hearts.”

Bonnie’s fingers flew to her eyes, as if to ward off a terrible vision. Elena

watched Alaric and Celia grimly.

Alaric gulped. “They were staked?” he asked uneasily.

“Yes. Now I know what you’ll be thinking. But Japan doesn’t have any tradition of

vampires. Kitsune—foxes—are probably the closest analog.”

Now Elena and Bonnie were hovering right over the map.

“And do kitsunes drink blood?”

“Just kitsune. The Japanese language has an interesting way of expressing

plurals. But to answer your question: no. They are legendary tricksters, and one

example of what they do is possess girls and women, and lead men to destruction

—into bogs, and so on. But here—well, you can almost read it like a book.”

“You make it sound like one. But not one I’d pick up for pleasure,” Alaric said,

and they both smiled bleakly.

“So, to go on with the book, it seems that this disease spread eventually to all the

children in the town. There were deadly fights. The parents somehow couldn’t even

get to the fishing boats in which they might have escaped the island.”

Elena—

I know. At least Fell’s Church isn’t on an island.

“And then there’s what we found at the town shrine. I can show you that—it’s

what Ronald Argyll died for.”

They both got up and went farther into the building until Celia stopped beside two

large urns on pedestals with a hideous thing in between them. It looked like a dress,

weathered until it was almost pure white, but sticking through holes in the clothing

were bones. Most horribly, one bleached and fleshless bone hung down from the

top of one of the urns.

“This is what Ronald was working on in the field before all this rain came,” Celia

explained. “It was probably the last death of the original inhabitants and it was

suicide.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Let’s see if I can get this right from Ronald’s notes. The priestess here doesn’t

have any other damage than that which caused her death. The shrine was a stone

building—once. When we got here we found only a floor, with all the stone steps

tumbled apart every which way. Hence Ronald’s use of the ladder. It gets quite

technical, but Ronald Argyll was a great forensic pathologist and I trust his reading

of the story.”

“Which is?” Alaric was taking in the jars and the bones with his camcorder.

“Someone—we don’t know who—smashed a hole in each of the jars. This is

before the chaos started. The town records make note of it as an act of vandalism,

a prank done by a child. But long after that the hole was sealed and the jars made

almost airtight again, except where the priestess had her hands plunged in the top

up to the wrist.”

With infinite care, Celia lifted the top off the jar that did not have a bone hanging

from it—to reveal another pair of longish bones, slightly less bleached, and with

strips of what must have been clothing on it. Tiny finger bones lay inside the jar.

“What Ronald thought was that this poor woman died as she performed a last

desperate act. Clever, too, if you see it from their perspective. She cut her wrists—

you can see how the tendon is shriveled in the better-preserved arm—and then

she let the entire contents of her bloodstream flow into the urns. We do know that

the urns show a heavy precipitation of blood on the bottom. She was trying to lure

something in—or perhaps something back in. And she died trying, and the clay that

she had probably hoped to use in her last conscious moments held her bones to

the jars.”

“Whew!” Alaric ran a hand over his forehead, but shivered at the same time.

Take pictures! Elena was mentally commanding him, using all her willpower to

transmit the order. She could see that Bonnie was doing the same, eyes shut, fists

clenched.

As if in obedience to their commands, Alaric was taking pictures as fast as he

could.

Finally, he was done. But Elena knew that without some outside impetus there

was no way that he was going to get those pictures to Fell’s Church until he himself

came to town—and even Meredith didn’t know when that would be.

So what do we do? Bonnie asked Elena, looking anguished.

Well…my tears were real when Stefan was in prison.

You want us to cry on him?

No, Elena said, not quite patiently. But we look like ghosts—let’s act like them.

Try blowing on the back of his neck.

Bonnie did, and they both watched Alaric shiver, look around him, draw his

windbreaker closer.

“And what about the other deaths in your own expedition?” he asked, huddling,

looking around apparently aimlessly.

Celia began speaking but neither Elena nor Bonnie was listening. Bonnie kept

blowing on Alaric from different directions, herding him to the single window in the

building that wasn’t shattered. There Elena had written with her finger on the

darkened cold glass. Once she knew that Alaric was looking that way she blew her

breath across the sentence: send all pix of jars 2 meredith now! Every time Alaric