And she couldn’t move. Not a finger. Certainly not a foot.
She felt Damon’s arms around her waist. Both of them. She wanted to let him support her weight as he had many times before.
But Damon was whispering to her, words like spells that allowed her legs to stop shaking and cramping and even let her stop breathing so fast that she might faint.
And then he was lifting her and Stefan’s arms were going around her and for a moment they were both holding her firmly. Then Stefan took her weight and gently put her feet down on firm slats.
Elena wanted to cling to him like a koala, but she knew that she mustn’t. She would make them both fall. So somewhere, from inner depths she didn’t know she had, she found the courage to take her own weight on her feet and fumbled for the creeper.
Then she lifted her head and whispered as loudly as she could, “Go on. We need to give Damon room.”
“Yes,” Stefan whispered back. But he kissed her on the forehead, a quick protective kiss, before he turned and stepped toward the impatient Bonnie.
Behind her, Elena heard — and felt — Damon jumping catlike over the gap.
Elena raised her eyes to stare at the back of Stefan’s head again. She couldn’t compass all the emotions she was feeling at that moment: love, terror, awe, excitement — and, of course, gratitude, all at once.
She didn’t dare turn her head to look at Damon behind her, but she felt exactly the same things for him.
“A few more steps,” he kept saying. “A few more steps.”
A brief eternity later, they were on solid ground, facing a medium-sized cavern, and Elena fell to her knees. She was sick and faint, but she tried to thank Damon as he passed by her on the snowy mountain trail.
“You were in my way,” he said shortly and as coldly as the wind. “If you had fallen you might have upset the entire bridge. And I don’t happen to feel like dying today.”
“What are you saying to her? What did you just say?” Stefan, who had been out of earshot, came hurrying back. “What did he say to you?”
Damon, examining his palm for creeper thorns, said without looking up, “I told her the truth, that’s all. So far she’s zero for two on this quest. Let’s hope that as long as you make it through they let you in the Gatehouse, because if they’re grading on performance we’ve flunked. Or should I say, one of us has flunked?”
“Shut up or I’ll shut you up,” Stefan said in a different voice than Elena had ever heard him use before. She stared. It was as if he’d grown ten years in one second.
“Don’t you ever talk to her or about her that way again, Damon!”
Damon stared at him for a moment, pupils contracted. Then he said, “Whatever,” and strolled away.
Stefan bent down to hold Elena until her shaking stopped.
And that’s that, Elena thought. An ice-cold rage gripped her. Damon had no respect for her at all; he had none for anyone but himself. She couldn’t protect Bonnie from Bonnie’s own feelings — or stop him from insulting her. She couldn’t stop Bonnie for forgiving. But she, Elena, was done with Damon. This last insult was the end.
The fog came in again as they walked through the cavern.
“Damon doesn’t mean to be such a — a bastard,” Bonnie said explosively. “He’s just — so often he feels like it’s the three of us against him — and — and—”
“Well, who started that? Even back riding the thurgs,” Stefan said.
“I know, but there’s something else,” Bonnie said humbly. “Since it’s only snow and rock and ice — he’s — I don’t know. He’s all tight. Something’s wrong.”
“He’s hungry,” Elena said, stricken by a sudden realization. Since the thurgs there had been nothing for the two vampires to hunt. They couldn’t exist, like foxes, on insects and mice. Of course Lady Ulma had provided plenty of Black Magic for them, the only thing that even resembled a substitute for blood. But their supply was dwindling, and of course, they had to think of the trip back, as well.
Suddenly Elena knew what would do her good.
“Stefan,” she murmured, pulling him into a nook in the craggy stone of the cave entrance. She pushed off her hood and unrolled her scarf enough to expose one side of her neck. “Don’t make me say ‘please’ too many times,” she whispered to him. “I can’t wait that long.”
Stefan looked into her eyes, saw that she was serious — and determined — and kissed one of her mittened hands.
“It’s been long enough now, I think — no, I’m sure, or I would never even attempt this,” he whispered. Elena tipped her head back. Stefan stood between her and the wind and she was almost warm. She felt the little initial pain and then Stefan was drinking and their minds slid together like two raindrops on a glass window.
He took very little blood. Just enough to make the difference in his eyes between still green pools and sparkling, effervescent streams.
But then his gaze went still again. “Damon…” he said, and paused awkwardly.
What could Elena say? I just severed all ties with him? They were supposed to help one another along these trials; to show their wit and courage. If she refused, would she fail again?
“Send him quick then,” she said. “Before I change my mind.”
Five minutes later Elena was again tucked into the little nook, while Damon turned her head back and forth with dispassionate precision, then suddenly darted forward and sank his fangs into a prominent vein. Elena felt her eyes go wide.
A bite that hurt this much — well, she hadn’t experienced it since the days when she had been stupid and unprepared and had fought with all her strength to get free.
As for Damon’s mind — there was a steel wall. Since she had to do this, she had been hoping to see the little boy who lived in Damon’s inmost soul, the one who was the unwilling Watch-Keeper over all of his secrets, but she couldn’t even thaw the steel a little.
After a minute or two, Stefan pulled Damon off of her — not gently. Damon came away sullenly, wiping his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Bonnie asked in a worried whisper, as Elena rummaged through Lady Ulma’s medicine box for a piece of gauze to staunch the unhealed wounds in her neck.
“I’ve been better,” Elena said briefly, as she wrapped up her scarf again.
Bonnie sighed. “Meredith is the one who really belongs here,” she said.
“Yes, but Meredith really belongs in Fell’s Church, too. I only hope they can hold on long enough for us to come back.”
“I only hope that we can come back with something that will help them,” Bonnie whispered.
Meredith and Matt spent the time from 2:00 A.M. to dawn pouring infinitesimal drops from Misao’s star ball onto the streets of the town, and asking the Power tosomehow — help them in the fight against Shinichi. This brisk movement from place to place had also netted a surprising bonus: kids. Not crazy kids. Normal ones, terrified of their brothers and sisters or of their parents, not daring to go home because of the awful things they had seen there. Meredith and Matt had crammed them into Matt’s mother’s second-hand SUV and brought them to Matt’s house.
In the end, they had more than thirty kids, from ages five to sixteen, all too frightened to play, or talk, or even to ask for anything. But they’d eaten everything Mrs. Flowers could find that wasn’t spoiled in Matt’s refrigerator and pantry, and from the pantries of the deserted houses on either side of the Honeycutts’.
Matt, watching a ten-year-old girl cramming plain white bread into her mouth with wolfish hunger, tears running down her grimy face as she chewed and swallowed, said quietly to Meredith, “Think we’ve got any ringers in here?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” she replied just as quietly. “But what are we going to do?
Cole doesn’t know anything helpful. We’ll just have to pray that the un-possessed kids will be able to help us when Shinichi’s ringers attack.”
“I think the best option when confronted by possessed kids who may have weapons is to run.”
Meredith nodded absently, but Matt noticed she took the stave everywhere with her now. “I’ve devised a little test for them. I’m going to smack every one with a Post-It, and see what happens. Kids who’ve done things they regret may get hysterical, kids who’re already just terrified may get some comfort, and the ringers will either attack or run.”