Meredith’s head was whirling. “I’m not a vampire! I hunt vampires and kill them!”
“He said,” her father whispered hoarsely: “‘Just see she gets a tablespoon a week. If you want her to live, that is. Try a blood pudding.’ He was laughing.”
Meredith didn’t need to ask if they had obeyed. At her house, they had blood sausage or pudding at least once a week. She had grown up with it. It was nothing special.
“Why?” she whispered hoarsely now. “Why didn’t he kill me?”
“I don’t know! We still don’t know! That man with his front all dripping with bloodyour blood, your brother’s blood, we didn’t know! And then at the last minute he grabbed for the two of you but you bit his hand to the bone,” her father said.
“He laughed — laughed! — with your teeth clamped in him and your little hands pushing him away, and said, ‘I’ll just leave you this one, then, and you can worry about what she will turn out to be. The boy I’m taking with me.’ And then suddenly I seemed to come out of a spell, for I was reaching for you again, ready to fight him for both of you. But I couldn’t! Once I had you, I couldn’t move another inch. And he left the house still laughing — and took your brother, Cristian, with him.”
Meredith thought. No wonder they didn’t want to hold any kind of celebration on the anniversaries of that day. Her grandmother dead, her grandfather going crazy, her brother lost, and herself — what? No wonder they celebrated her birthday a week early.
Meredith tried to stay calm. The world was falling to pieces around her but she had to stay calm. Staying calm had kept her alive all her life. Without even having to count, she was breathing out deep, and in through her nostrils, and out through her mouth. Deep, deep, cleansing breaths. Soothing peace throughout her body. Only part of her was hearing her mother:
“We came home early that night because I had a headache—”
“Sh, querida—” her father was beginning.
“We got home early,” her mother keened. “O Virgen Bendecida, what would we have found if we had been late? We would have lost you, too! My baby! My baby with blood on her mouth—”
“But we got home early enough to save her,” Meredith’s father said huskily, as if trying to wake her mother from a spell.
“Ah, gracias, Princesa Divina, Vigen pura y impoluto…” Her mother couldn’t seem to stop crying.
“Daddy,” Meredith said urgently, aching for her mother but desperately needing information. “Have you ever seen him again? Or heard about him? My brother, Cristian?”
“Yes,” her father said. “Oh, yes, we have seen something.”
Her mother gasped. “’Nando, no!”
“She has to learn the truth sometime,” her father said. He rummaged among some cardboard file folders on the desk. “Look!” he said to Meredith. “Look at this.”
Meredith stared in utter disbelief.
In the Dark Dimension Bonnie shut her eyes. There was a lot of wind at the top of a tall building’s window. That was all her mind had a thought for when she was out of the window and then back into it and the ogre was laughing and Shinichi’s terrible voice saying, “You don’t really think we’d let you go without questioning you thoroughly?”
Bonnie heard the words without them making sense, and then suddenly they did.
Her captors were going to hurt her. They were going to torture her. They were going to take her bravery away.
She thought she screamed something at him. All she knew, though, was that there was a soft explosion of heat behind her, and then — unbelievably — all dressed up in a cloak with badges that made him look like some kind of military prince, there was Damon.
Damon.
He was so late she’d long ago given up on him. But now he was flashing a thereand-gone brilliant smile at Shinichi, who was staring as if he’d been stricken dumb.
And now Damon was saying, “I’m afraid Ms. McCullough has another engagement at that moment. But I will be back to kick your ass — immediately.
Move from this room and I’ll kill you all, slowly. Thank you for your time and consideration.”
And before anyone could even recover from their first shock at his arrival, he and Bonnie were blasting off through the windows. He went, not out of the building backward as if retreating, but straight ahead forward, one hand in front of him, wrapping them both in a black but ethereal bundle of Power. They shattered the two-way mirror in Bonnie’s room and were almost all the way through to the next room before Bonnie’s mind tagged the first “empty.” Then they were crashing through an elaborate videoset-window — made to let people think they had a view of the outdoors, and flying over someone lying on a bed. Then…it was just a series of crashes, as far as Bonnie was concerned. She barely got a glimpse of what was going on in each room. Finally…
The crashing stopped. This left Bonnie holding on to Damon koala-style — she wasn’t stupid — and they were very, very high in the air. And mobilizing in front of them, and off to the sides, and as far as Bonnie could see, were women who were also flying, but in little machines that looked like a combination of a motorcycle and a Jet Ski. No wheels, of course. The machines were all gold, which was also the color of each driver’s hair.
So the first word Bonnie gasped to her rescuer, after he had blasted a tunnel through the large slave-owner’s building to save her, was, “Guardians?”
“Indispensable, considering the fact that I didn’t have the first idea where the bad guys might have taken you and I suspected that there might be a time limit. This was actually the very last of the slave-sellers we were due to check. We finally… lucked out.” For someone who had lucked out, he sounded a little strange.
Almost…choked up.
Water was on Bonnie’s cheeks but it was being flicked away too fast for her to wipe it. Damon was holding her so that she couldn’t see his face, and he was holding her very, very tightly.
It really was Damon. He had called out the cavalry and, despite the city-wide mind-gridlock, he had found her.
“They hurt you, didn’t they, little redbird? I saw…I saw your face,” Damon said in his new choked-up voice. Bonnie didn’t know what to say. But suddenly she didn’t mind how hard he squeezed her. She even found herself squeezing back.
Suddenly, to her shock, Damon broke her koala-grip and pulled her up and kissed her on the lips very gently. “Little redbird! I’m going to go now, and make them pay for what they did to you.”
Bonnie heard herself say, “No, don’t.”
“No?” Damon repeated, bewildered.
“No,” Bonnie said. She needed Damon with her. She didn’t care what happened to Shinichi. There was a sweetness unfolding inside her, but there was also a rushing in her head. It really was a pity, but in a few moments she would be unconscious.
Meanwhile, she had three thoughts in mind and all of them were clear. What she was afraid of was that they would be less clear later, after she had fainted. “Do you have a star ball?”
“I have twenty-eight star balls,” Damon said, and looked at her quizzically.
That wasn’t what Bonnie meant at all; she meant one to record onto. “Can you remember three things?” she said to Damon.
“I’d gamble on it.” This time Damon kissed her softly on the forehead.
“First, you ruined my very brave death.”
“We can always go back and you can have another try.” Damon’s voice was less choked now; more his own.
“Second, you left me at that horrible inn for a week—” As if she could see inside his mind, she saw this slice into him like some kind of wooden sword. He was holding her so tightly that she really couldn’t breathe. “I…I didn’t mean to. It was really only four days, but I never should have done it,” he said.
“Third.” Bonnie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t think any star ball was ever stolen at all. What never existed can’t be stolen, can it?”
She looked at him. Damon was looking back in a way that normally would have thrilled her. He was obviously, blatantly distressed. But Bonnie was just barely hanging on to consciousness at this point.
“And…fourth…” She puzzled out slowly.
“Fourth? You said three things.” Damon smiled, just a little.