Perfectly balanced, it was meant to be held in the middle, and the designs picked out in jewels around the handhold showed that its creator had had excellent taste.
The ends showed that he or she had a sense of humor as well. The two ends of the stave were made of ironwood for strength — but they were also decorated. In shape, they were made to resemble one of humankind’s oldest weapons, the flinttipped spear. But there were tiny spikes extruding from each of these “spear flakes,” set firmly into the ironwood. These tiny spikes were of different materials: silver for werewolves, wood for vampires, white ash for Old Ones, iron for all eldritch creatures, and a few that Damon couldn’t quite work out.
“They’re refillable,” the hunter-slayer explained. “Hypodermic needles inject on impact. And of course different poisons for different species — quick and simple for humans, wolfsbane for those naughty puppies, and so on. It really is a jewel of a weapon. I wish I had found it before we met Klaus.”
Then she seemed to shake herself back into reality.
“So, Damon, what’s it going to be?” asked Meredith.
Damon nodded thoughtfully, glancing back and forth between the fighting stave and the pillowcase in his hand.
Hadn’t he suspected something like this for a long time? Subconsciously? After all, there had been that attack on the grandfather, which had failed to either kill him or to erase his memory completely. Damon’s imagination could fill in the rest: her parents seeing no reason to blight their tiny daughter’s life with this gruesome business — a whole new change of scenery — and then giving up the practice in the provincial, protected little town of Fell’s Church.
If they had only known.
Oh, doubtless they had made sure that Meredith had had self-defense and various martial arts training since she was a child, while swearing her to absolute secrecy — even from her best friends.
Well, now, Damon thought. The first of Shinichi’s riddles was already solved.
“One of you has a lifetime secret kept from everyone.” I always knew there was something about this girl…and this is it. I’d bet my life that she’s a black belt.
There had been a long silence. Now Damon broke it.
Your ancestors were hunters too? he asked, as if she were telepathic. He waited a moment — still silence. Okay — no telepathy. That was good. He nodded at the magnificent stave. “That was certainly made for a lord or lady.”
Meredith wasn’t stupid. She spoke without glancing away from his eyes. She was ready, at any instant, to go into killing mode. “We’re just ordinary folk, trying to get a job done so innocent humans will be safer.”
“By killing the odd vampire or two.”
“Well, so far in recorded history saying ‘Naughty, naughty, Mama spank’ has failed to convert a single vampire to vegetarianism.”
Damon had to laugh. “Pity you weren’t born early enough to convert Stefan. He could have been your grand triumph.”
“You think that’s funny. But we do have converts.”
“Yes. People will say anything while you’re holding a pointed stick at them.”
“People who feel that it’s wrong to Influence other people into believing they’re getting something for nothing.”
“That’s it! Meredith! Let me Influence you!”
This time it was Meredith who laughed.
“No, I’m serious! When I’m a vampire again, let me Influence you not to be so much afraid of a bite. I swear I won’t take more than a teaspoon. But that would give me time to show you—”
“A nice big house of candy that never existed? A relative who died ten years ago and who would have abhorred the thought of you taking my memory of her and using it as a lure? A dream of ending world hunger that doesn’t put food into one mouth?”
This girl, thought Damon, is dangerous. It’s like a Counter-Influence that they’ve taught to their members. Wanting her to see that vampires, or ex-vampires, or Once and Future Vampires had some good qualities — like courage — he let go of the pillowcase and grasped the end of the fighting stave with both hands.
Meredith raised an eyebrow. “Did I not just recently tell you that a number of those spikes you’ve just driven into your flesh are poisonous? Or were you not listening?”
She had automatically grabbed the stave as well, above the dangerous zone.
“You told me,” he said inscrutably — he hoped.
“I particularly said ‘poisonous to humans as well as to werewolves and other things’—recall it?”
“You told me that, too. But I’d rather die than live as a human, so: Let the games begin.” And with that, Damon began to push the two-headed stave toward Meredith’s heart.
She immediately clamped down on the stave as well, pushing it back toward him.
But he had three advantages, as they both soon realized. He was slightly taller and more strongly muscled even than lithe, athletic Meredith; he had a longer reach than hers; and he had taken up a much more aggressive position. Even though he could feel poisoned little spikes biting into his palms, he thrust forward and up until the killing point was once again near her heart. Meredith pushed back with an amazing amount of strength and then suddenly, somehow, they were even again.
Damon glanced up to see how that had happened, and saw, to his shock, that she also had grasped the stave in the killing zone. Now her hands were dripping blood onto the floor just as his were.
“Meredith!”
“What? I take my job seriously.”
Despite her gambit, he was stronger. Inch by inch, he forced his torn palms to hang on, his arms to exert pressure. And inch by inch she was forced backward, refusing to quit — until there was no more room to back up.
And there they stood, the entire length of the stave between them, and the refrigerator flat against Meredith’s back.
All Damon could think of was Elena. If he somehow survived this — and Meredith did not — then what would those malachite eyes say to him? How would he live with what they said?
And then, with infuriating timing, like a chess player knocking over her own king, Meredith let go of the spear, conceding Damon’s superior strength.
After which, seeming to have no fear of turning her back on him, she took a jar full of salve from a kitchen cupboard, scooped out a dollop of the contents, and motioned for Damon to hold out his hands. He frowned. He’d never heard of a poison that got into the blood that could be cured by external measures.
“I didn’t put real poison in the human needles,” she said calmly. “But your palms will be torn and this is an excellent remedy. It’s ancient, passed down for generations.”
“How kind of you to share,”—at his most sharply ironic.
“And now what are we going to do? Start all over again?” he added as Meredith calmly began to rub salve into her own hands.
“No. Hunter-slayers have a code, you know. You won the sphere. I assume you’re planning to do what Sage seems to have done. Open the Gate to the Dark Dimension.”
“Open the Gate to the Dark Dimensions,” he corrected. “Probably I should have mentioned — there’s more than one. But all I want is to become a vampire again.
And we can talk as we go, since I see we’re both wearing our cat burglar costumes.”
Meredith was dressed much as he was, in black jeans and a lightweight black sweater. With her long shining dark hair she looked unexpectedly beautiful. Damon, who had considered running her through with the stave, just as his obligation to vampire-kind, now found himself wavering. If she gave him no trouble on his way to the Gate, he would let her go, he decided. He was feeling magnanimous — for the first time he had faced down and conquered the fearsome Meredith, and besides, she had a code as he did. He felt a sort of kinship with her.
With ironic gallantry, he waved her on before him, retaining possession of the pillowcase and the fighting stave himself.
As Damon quietly shut the front door he saw that dawn was about to break.