Contents 10 страница. and how much more serious everyone was without her

and how much more serious everyone was without her. Meredith knew that if Elena

had done her best, she could have offset it. But she also knew that Elena had one

thing on her mind above all others, and that was Stefan, who was stricken with guilt

for allowing his brother to abduct Bonnie. And meanwhile Meredith knew that both

she and Matt were feeling guilty too, because today they would be leaving the other

three, even if only for the evening. They each had been summoned home by

parents who demanded to see them for dinner.

Mrs. Flowers clearly didn’t want them to feel too badly. “With the help you’ve

given, I can make our urns,” she said. “Since Matt has found my wheel—”

“I didn’t exactly find it,” Matt said under his breath. “It was there in the storage

room all the time and it fell on me.”

“—and since Meredith has received her pictures—along, I’m sure, with an email

from Mr. Saltzman—perhaps she could get them enlarged or whatever.”

“Of course, and show them to the Saitous, too, to make sure that the symbols

say the things we want them to,” Meredith promised. “And Bonnie can—”

She broke off short. Idiot! She was an idiot, she thought. And, as a hunter-slayer,

she was supposed to be clear-minded and at all times maintain control. She felt

terrible when she looked at Matt and saw the naked pain in his face.

“Dear Bonnie will surely be home soon,” Mrs. Flowers finished for her.

And we all know that’s a lie, and I don’t have to be psychic to detect it, Meredith

thought. She noticed that Mrs. Flowers hadn’t weighed in with anything from Ma ma.

“We’ll all be just fine here,” Elena said, finally picking up the ball as she realized

that Mrs. Flowers was looking at her with ladylike distress. “You two think we’re

some kind of babies who need to be taken care of,” she said, smiling at Matt and

Meredith, “but you’re just babies too! Off you go! But be careful.”

They went, Meredith giving Elena one last glance. Elena nodded very slightly,

then turned stiffly, mimicking holding a bayonet. It was the changing of the guard.

Elena let Stefan help her clean up the dishes—they were all letting him do little

things now because he looked so much better. They spent the morning trying to

contact Bonnie in different ways. But then Mrs. Flowers asked if Elena could board

up the last few of the basement windows, and Stefan couldn’t stand it. Matt and

Meredith had already done a far more dangerous job. They’d hung two tarps from

the house’s ridgepole, each one hanging down one side of the main roof. On each

tarp were the characters that Isobel’s mother put on the Post-it Note amulets she

always gave them, painted at an enormous scale in black paint. Stefan had been

allowed only to watch and give suggestions from the widow’s walk above his attic

bedroom. But now…

“We’ll nail up the boards together,” he said firmly, and went off to get a hammer

and nails.

It wasn’t really such a hard job anyway. Elena held the boards and Stefan wielded

the hammer and she trusted him not to hit her fingers, which meant that they got on

very quickly.

It was a perfect day—clear, sunny, with a slight breeze. Elena wondered what

was happening to Bonnie, right now, and if Damon was taking care of her properly

—or at all. She seemed unable to shake off her worries these last days: over

Stefan, over Bonnie, and over a curious feeling that she had to know what was

going on in town. Maybe she could disguise herself…

God, no! Stefan said voicelessly. When she turned he was spitting out nails and

looking both horrified and ashamed. Apparently she’d been projecting.

“I’m sorry,” he said before Elena could get the nails out of her mouth, “but you

know better than anyone why you can’t go.”

“But it’s maddening not knowing what’s happening,” Elena said, having gotten rid

of her nails. “We don’t know anything. What’s happening to Bonnie, what state the

town’s in—”

“Let’s finish this board,” Stefan said. “And then let me hold you.”

When the last board was secure, Stefan raised her from the lower embankment

where she was sitting, not bride-style, but kid-style, putting her toes on top of his

feet. He danced her a little, whirled her a couple of times in the air, and then

nabbed her coming down again.

“I know your problem,” he said soberly.

Elena looked up quickly. “You do?” she said, alarmed.

Stefan nodded, and to her further alarm said, “It’s Love-itis. Means the patient

has a whole slew of people she cares about, and she can’t be happy unless each

and every one of them is safe and happy themselves.”

Elena deliberately slipped off his shoes and looked up at him. “Some more than

others,” she said hesitantly.

Stefan looked down at her and then he took her in his arms. “I’m not as good as

you,” he said while Elena’s heart pounded in shame and remorse for ever having

touched Damon, ever having danced with him, ever having kissed him. “If you are

happy, that’s all I want, after that prison. I can live; I can die…peacefully.”

“If we’re happy,” Elena corrected.

“I won’t tempt the gods. I’ll settle for you. ”

“No, you can’t! Don’t you see? If you disappeared again, I’d worry and fret and

follow you. To Hell if I had to.”

“I’ll take you with me wherever I go,” Stefan said hastily. “If you’ll take me with

you. ”

Elena relaxed slightly. That would do, for now. As long as Stefan was with her she

could stand anything.

They sat and cuddled, right under the open sky, even with a maple tree and a

clump of slender waving beeches nearby. She extended her aura a little and felt it

touch Stefan’s. Peace flooded into her, and all the dark thoughts were left behind.

Almost all.

“Since I first saw you, I loved you—but it was the wrong kind of love. See how

long it took me to figure that out?” Elena whispered into the hollow of his throat.

“Since I first saw you, I loved you —but I didn’t know who you really were. You

were like a ghost in a dream. But you put me straight pretty quickly,” Stefan said,

obviously glad that he could brag about her. “And we’ve survived—everything. They

say long-distance relationships can be pretty difficult,” he added, laughing, and then

he stopped, and she could feel all his faculties fixed on her suddenly, breath

stopping so he could hear her better.

“But then, there’s Bonnie and Damon,” he said before she could say or think a

word. “We have to find them soon—and they’d damn well better be together—or it

had better have been Bonnie’s decision to part.”

“There’s Bonnie and Damon,” agreed Elena, glad that she could share even her

darkest thoughts with someone. “I can’t think about them. I can’t not think about

them. We do have to find them, and very fast—but I pray that they’re with Lady

Ulma now. Maybe Bonnie is going to a ball or gala. Maybe Damon is hunting with

that Black Ops program.”

“As long as nobody’s really hurt.”

“Yes.” Elena tried hard to tuck herself closer to Stefan. She wanted to—be

closer to him, somehow. The way they had when she had been out of her body and

she had just sunk into him.

But of course, with regular bodies, they couldn’t…

But of course they could. Now. Her blood…

Elena really didn’t know which of them thought of it first. She looked away,

embarrassed at even having considered it—and caught the tail end of Stefan

looking away too.

“I don’t think we have the right,” she whispered. “Not to—be that happy—when

everyone else is miserable. Or doing things for the town or for Bonnie.”

“Of course we don’t,” Stefan said firmly, but he had to gulp a little first.

“No,” Elena said.

“No,” Stefan said firmly, and then right in the middle of her echoing “no,” he went

and pulled her up and kissed her breathless.

And of course, Elena couldn’t let him do that and not get even. So she

demanded, still breathless, but almost angry, that he say “no” again, and when he

did it she caught him and kissed him.

“You were happy,” she accused a moment later. “I felt it.”

Stefan was too much of a gentleman to accuse her of being happy because of

anything she might do. He said, “I couldn’t help it. It just happened by itself. I felt our

minds together, and that made me happy. But then I remembered about poor

Bonnie. And—”

“Poor Damon?”

“Well, somehow I don’t think we need to go so far as to call him ‘poor Damon.’

But I did remember him,” he said.

“Well done,” Elena said.

“We’d better go inside now,” Stefan said. And then hastily, “Downstairs, I mean.

Maybe we can think of something more to do for them.”

“Like what? There’s not a thing I can think of. I did meditation and Attempt to

Contact by Out-of-Body Experience—”

“From nine thirty to ten thirty A.M.,” Stefan said. “And meanwhile I was trying all

frequency telepathic calls. No response.”

“Then we tried with the Ouija board.”

“For half an hour—and all we got was nonsense.”

“It did tell us the clay was coming.”

“I think that was me bumping it toward ‘yes.’”

“Then I tried to tap into the ley lines below us for Power—”

“From eleven to around eleven thirty,” Stefan recited. “While I tried to go into

hibernation to have a prophetic dream….”

“We really tried hard,” Elena said grimly.

“And then we nailed the last few boards up,” Stefan added. “Bringing us to a little

after twelve thirty P.M.”

“Can you think of a single Plan—we’re down to G or H now—that might allow us

to help them any more?”

“I can’t. I just honestly can’t,” Stefan said. Then he added, hesitantly, “Maybe

Mrs. Flowers has some housework for us. Or”—even more hesitantly, testing the

waters—“we could go into town.”

“No! You’re definitely not strong enough for that!” Elena said sharply. “And

there’s no more housework,” she added. Then she threw everything to the wind.

Every responsibility. Every rationality. Just like that. She began to tow Stefan to the

house so they could get there quicker.

“Elena—”

I’m burning my bridges! Elena thought stubbornly, and suddenly she didn’t care.

And if Stefan cared she would bite him. But it was as if some spell had suddenly

come over her so that she felt she would die without his touch. She wanted to touch

him. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to be her mate.

“Elena!” Stefan could hear what she was thinking. He was torn, of course, Elena

thought. Stefan was always torn. But how dare he be torn about this?

She turned around to face him, blazing. “You don’t want to!”

“I don’t want to do it and then find out I’ve Influenced you into it!”

“You were Influencing me?” shouted Elena.

Stefan threw out his hands and yelled, “How can I know when I want you so

much?”

Oh. Well, that was better. There was a little glitter in Elena’s side-eye and she

looked at it and realized that Mrs. Flowers had quietly shut a window.

Elena darted a glance at Stefan. He was trying not to blush. She doubled over,

trying not to laugh. Then she stood on his shoes again.

“Maybe we deserve an hour alone”—dangerously.

“A whole hour?” Stefan’s conspiratorial whisper made an hour sound like

eternity.

“We do deserve it,” Elena said, enthralled. She began to tow him again.

“No.” Stefan pulled her back, lifted her—bridal-style—and suddenly they were

going straight up, fast. They shot up three stories and a little more and landed on

the platform of the widow’s walk above his room.

“But it’s locked from inside—”

Stefan stomped on the trapdoor—hard. The door disappeared.

Elena was impressed.

They floated down into Stefan’s room amid a shaft of light and motes of dust that

looked like fireflies or stars.

“I’m a little nervous,” Elena said.

She heeled her sandals off and slid out of her jeans and top and into bed…only

to find Stefan already there.

They’re faster, she thought. As fast as you think you are, they’re always faster.

She turned toward Stefan in the bed. She was wearing a camisole and

underwear. She was scared.

“Don’t,” he said. “I don’t even have to bite you.”

“You do so. It’s all that weird stuff about my blood.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d forgotten. Elena would bet that he hadn’t forgotten

a word about her blood…allowing vampires to do things they couldn’t otherwise.

Her life energy gave them back all their human abilities, and he wouldn’t forget that.

They’re smarter, she thought.

“Stefan, it’s not supposed to be like this! I’m supposed to parade in front of you in

a golden negligee designed by Lady Ulma, with jewels by Lucen and golden stilts—

which I don’t own. And there are supposed to be scattered flower petals on the bed

and roses in little round bubble bowls and white vanilla candles.”

“Elena,” Stefan said, “come here.”

She went into his arms, and let herself breathe in the fresh smell of him, warm

and spicy, with a trace of rusty nails.

You’re my life, Stefan told her silently. We’re not going to do anything today.

There’s not much time, and you deserve your golden negligee and your roses

and candles. If not from Lady Ulma, from the finest Earth designers that money

can provide. But…kiss me?

Elena kissed him willingly, so glad that he was willing to wait. The kiss was warm

and comforting and she didn’t mind the slight taste of rust. And it was wonderful to

be with someone who would provide exactly what she needed, whether that was a

slight mind probe, just to make her feel safer, or…

And then sheet lightning hit them. It seemed to come from both of them at once,

and then Elena involuntarily clamped her teeth on Stefan’s lip, drawing blood.

Stefan locked his arms around her, and barely waited for her to back off a little,

before deliberately taking her lower lip in his own teeth and…after a moment of

tension that seemed to last forever…biting down hard.

Elena almost cried out. She almost then and there unleashed the still-undefined

Wings of Destruction on him. But two things stopped her. One, Stefan had never,

ever hurt her before. And, two, she was being drawn into something so ancient and

mystical that she couldn’t stop now.

A minute of finessing and Stefan had the two little wounds aligned. Blood surged

from Elena’s bleeding lip and, in direct connection with Stefan’s less serious

wound, caused a backflow. Her blood into his lip.

And the same thing happened with Stefan’s blood; some of it, rich with Power,

rushed into Elena.

It wasn’t perfect. A bead of blood swelled and stood gleaming on Elena’s lip. But

Elena couldn’t have cared less. A moment later the bead dropped down into

Stefan’s mouth and she felt the sheer staggering power of how much he loved her.

She herself was concentrating on one single tiny feeling, somewhere in the

center of this storm they’d called up. This kind of exchange of blood—she was sure

as she could be—this was the old way, the way that two vampires could share

blood and love and their souls. She was being drawn into Stefan’s mind. She felt his

soul, pure and unconstrained, swirling around her with a thousand different

emotions, tears from his past, joy from the present, all open without a trace of a

shield from her.

She felt her own soul lift to meet his, herself unshielded and unafraid. Stefan had

long ago seen any selfishness, vanity, over-ambition in her—and forgiven it. He’d

seen all of her and loved all of her, even the bad parts.

And so she saw him, as darkness as tender as rest, as gentle as evensong,

wrapping black protective wings around her…

Stefan, I…

Love…I know …

That was when someone knocked on the door.

A fter breakfast Matt went online to find two stores, neither in Fell’s Church, that

had the amount of clay Mrs. Flowers said she’d need and that said they’d deliver.

But after that there was the matter of driving away from the boardinghouse and by

the last lonely remains of where the Old Wood had been. He drove by the little

thicket where Shinichi often came like a demonic Pied Piper with the possessed

children shuffling behind him—the place where Sheriff Mossberg had gone after

them and hadn’t come out. Where, later, protected by magical wards on Post-it

Notes, he and Tyrone Alpert had pulled out a bare, chewed femur.

Today, he figured the only way to get past the thicket was to work his wheezing

junk car up by stages, and it was actually going over sixty when he flew by the

thicket, even managing to hit the turn perfectly. No trees fell on him, no swarms of

foot-long bugs.

He whispered “Whoa,” in relief and headed for home. He dreaded that—but

simply driving through Fell’s Church was so horrible it glued his tongue to the top of

his mouth. It looked—this pretty, innocent little town where he had grown up—as if it

were one of those neighborhoods you saw on TV or on the Internet that had been

bombed, or something. And whether it was bombs or disasterous fires, one house

in four was simply rubble. A few were half-rubble, with police tape enclosing them,

which meant that whatever had happened had happened early enough for the

police to care—or dare. Around the burned-out bits the vegetation flourished

strangely: a decorative bush from one house grown so as to be halfway across a

neighbor’s grass. Vines dipping from one tree to another, to another, as if this were

some ancient jungle.

His home was right in the middle of a long block of houses full of kids—and in

summer, when grandchildren inevitably came to visit, there were even more kids.

Matt just hoped that that part of summer vacation was done…but would Shinichi

and Misao let the youngsters go home? Matt had no idea. And, if they went home,

would they keep spreading the disease in their own hometowns? Where did it stop?

Driving down his block, though, Matt saw nothing hideous. There were kids

playing out on the front lawns, or the sidewalks, crouching over marbles, hanging

out in the trees. There was no single overt thing that he could put his finger on that

was weird.

He was still uneasy. But he’d reached his house now, the one with a grand old

oak tree shading the porch, so he had to get out. He coasted to a stop just under

the tree and parked by the sidewalk. He grabbed a large laundry bag from the

backseat. He’d been accumulating dirty clothes for a couple of weeks at the

boardinghouse and it hadn’t seemed fair to ask Mrs. Flowers to wash them.

As he got out of the car, pulling the bag out with him, he was just in time to hear

the birdsong stop.

For a moment after it did, he wondered what was wrong. He knew that something

was missing, cut short. It made the air heavier. It even seemed to change the smell

of the grass.

Then he realized. Every bird, including the raucous crows that lived in the oak

trees, had gone silent.

All at once.

Matt felt a twisting in his belly as he looked up and around. There were two kids in

the oak tree right beside his car. His mind was still stubbornly trying to hang on to:

Children. Playing. Okay. His body was smarter. His hand was already in his pocket,

pulling out a pad of Post-it Notes: the flimsy bits of paper that usually stopped evil

magic cold.

Matt hoped Meredith would remember to ask Isobel’s mother for more amulets.

He was running low, and…

…and there were two kids playing in the old oak tree. Except they weren’t. They

were staring at him. One boy was hanging upside down by his knees and the other

was gobbling something…out of a garbage bag.

The hanging kid was staring at him with strangely acute eyes. “Have you ever

wondered what it’s like to be dead?” he asked.

And now the head of the gobbling boy came up, thick bright red all around his

mouth. Bright red—

— blood. And…whatever was in the garbage bag was moving. Kicking. Thrashing

weakly. Trying to get away.

A wave of nausea washed over Matt. Acid hit his throat. He was going to puke.

The gobbling kid was staring at him with stony black-as-a-pit eyes. The hanging kid

was smiling.

Then, as if stirred by a hot breath of wind, Matt felt the fine hairs on the back of

his neck stand up. It wasn’t just the birds that had gone quiet. Everything had. No

child’s voice was raised in argument or song or speech.

He whirled around and saw why. They were staring at him. Every single kid on

the block was silently watching him. Then, with a chilling precision, as he turned

back to look at the boys in the tree, all the others came toward him.

Except they weren’t walking.

They were creeping. Lizard-fashion. That’s why some of them had seemed to be

playing with marbles on the sidewalk. They were all moving in the same way, bellies

close to the ground, elbows up, hands like forepaws, knees splaying to the side.

Now he could taste bile. He looked the other way down the street and found

another group creeping. Grinning unnatural grins. It was as if someone was pulling

their cheeks from behind them, pulling them hard, so that their grins almost broke

their faces in half.

Matt noticed something else. Suddenly they’d stopped, and while he stared at

them, they stayed still. Perfectly still, staring back at him. But when he looked away,

he saw the creeping figures out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t have enough Post-it Notes for all of them.

You can’t run away from this. It sounded like an outside voice in his head.

Telepathy. But maybe that was because Matt’s head had turned into a roiling red

cloud, floating upward.

Fortunately, his body heard it and suddenly he was up on the back of his car, and

had grabbed the hanging kid. For a moment he had a helpless impulse to let go of

the boy. The kid still stared at him but with eerie, uncanny eyes that were half rolled

back in his head. Instead of dropping him, Matt slapped a Post-It Note on the boy’s

forehead, swinging him at the same time to sit on the back of the car.

A pause and then wailing. The kid must be fourteen at least, but about thirty

seconds after the Ban Against Evil (pocket-size) was smacked on him he was

sobbing real kid sobs.

As one, the crawling kids let out a hiss. It was like a giant steam engine.

Hsssssssssssssssssssssss.

They began to breathe in and out very fast, as if working up to some new state.

Their creeping slowed to a crawl. But they were breathing so hard Matt could see

their sides hollow and fill.

As Matt turned to look at one group of them, they froze, except for the unnatural

breathing. But he could feel the ones behind him getting closer.

By now Matt’s heart was pounding in his ears. He could fight a group of them—

but not with a group on his back. Some of them looked only ten or eleven. Some

looked almost his age. Some were girls, for God’s sake. Matt remembered what

possessed girls had done the last time he’d met them and felt violent revulsion.

But he knew that looking up at the gobbling kid was going to make him sicker. He

could hear smacking, chewing sounds—and he could hear a thin little whistle of

helpless pain and weak struggling against the bag.

He whirled quickly again, to keep off the other side of crawlers, and then made

himself look up. With a quiet crackle, the garbage bag fell away when he grabbed it

but the kid held on to what was in—

Oh my God. He’s eating a baby! A baby! A—

He yanked the kid out of the tree and his hand automatically slapped a Post-It

onto the boy’s back. And then—then, thank God, he saw the fur. It wasn’t a baby. It

was too small to be a baby, even a newborn. But it was eaten.

The kid raised his bloody face to Matt’s, and Matt saw that it was Cole Reece,

Cole who was only thirteen and lived right next door. Matt hadn’t even recognized

him before.

Cole’s mouth was wide open in horror now, and his eyes were bulging out of his

head with terror and sorrow, and tears and snot were streaming down his face.

“He made me eat Toby,” he started in a whisper that became a scream. “He

made me eat my guinea pig! He made me— why why why did he do that? I ATE

TOBY!”

He threw up all over Matt’s shoes. Blood-red vomit.

Merciful death for the animal. Quick, Matt thought. But this was the hardest thing

he’d ever tried to do. How to do it—a hard stomp on the creature’s head? He

couldn’t. He had to try something else first.

Matt peeled off a Post-It Note and put it, trying not to look, on the fur. And just like

that it was over. The guinea pig went slack. The spell had undone whatever had

been keeping it alive up to this point.

There was blood and puke on Matt’s hands, but he made himself turn to Cole.

Cole had his eyes shut tight and little choking sounds came from him.

Something in Matt snapped.

“You want some of this?” he shouted, holding out the Post-it pad as if it were the

revolver he’d left with Mrs. Flowers. He whirled again, shouting, “ You want some?

How about you? You, Josh?” He was recognizing faces now. “You, Madison? How

’bout you, Bryn? Bring it on! You all bring it on! BRING IT—”

Something touched his shoulder. He spun, Post-it Note ready. Then he stopped

short and relief bubbled up in him like Evian water at some fancy restaurant. He

was staring right into the face of Dr. Alpert, Fell’s Church’s own country doctor. She

had her SUV parked beside his car, in the middle of the street. Behind her,

protecting her back, was Tyrone, who was going to be next year’s quarterback at

Robert E. Lee High. His sister, a sophomore-to-be, was trying to get out of the

SUV too, but she stopped when Tyrone saw her.

“Jayneela!” he roared in a voice only the Tyre-minator could produce. “You get

back in and buckle up! You know what Mom said! You do it now!”

Matt found himself clutching at Dr. Alpert’s chocolate brown hands. He knew she

was a good woman, and a good caretaker, who had adopted her daughter’s young

children when their divorced mother had died of cancer. Maybe she would help him,

too. He began babbling. “Oh, God, I’ve gotta get my mom out. My mom lives here

alone. And I have to get her away from here.” He knew he was sweating. He hoped

he wasn’t crying.

“Okay, Matt,” the doctor said in her husky voice. “I’m getting my own family out

this afternoon. We’re going to stay with relatives in West Virginia. She’s welcome

to come.”

It couldn’t be this easy. Matt knew he had tears in his eyes now. He refused to

blink, though, and let them come down. “I don’t know what to say—but if you would

—you’re an adult, you see. She won’t listen to me. She will listen to you. This whole

block is infected. This kid Cole—” He couldn’t go on. But Dr. Alpert saw it all in a

flash—the animal, the boy with blood on his teeth and his mouth, still retching.

Dr. Alpert didn’t react. She just had Jayneela throw her a packet of Wet Wipes

from the SUV and held the heaving kid with one hand, while vigorously scrubbing

his face clean. “Go home,” she told him sternly.

“You have to let the infected ones go,” she said to Matt, with a terrible look in her

eyes. “Cruel as it seems, they only pass it on to the few who’re still well.” Matt