“That’s what you tell us!” Stefan cried, trying to get in front of Elena. “But why are we so particularly damned, of all creatures? How do you know it’s impossible?
Have you ever even tried?”
Red-haired Idola was making a disgusted gesture, when Bonnie interrupted, her voice shaking. “It’s ridiculous! You can rebuild a town, you can kill the person who’s really behind all Shinichi and Misao did, but you can’t bring one little vampire back?
You brought Elena back!”
“Elena’s death as a vampire allowed her to become the Guardian she was originally meant to be. As for the person who gave orders to Shinichi and Misao: It was Inari Saitou — Obaasan Saitou, as you knew her — and she is already dead, thanks to your friends in Fell’s Church, who weakened her — and to you, who destroyed her star ball.”
“Inari? You mean Isobel’s grandma? You’re saying it was her star ball in the Great Tree’s trunk? That’s impossible!” Bonnie cried.
“No, it’s not. It’s the truth,” blond Ryannen said simply.
“And she’s dead now?”
“After a long battle which nearly killed your friends. Yes — but what actually killed her was having her star ball destroyed.”
“So,” dark Susurre said quietly, “if you follow the curve…in a way your Damon did die to save Fell’s Church from another massacre like the one on that Japanese island. He kept saying that was what he’d come to the Nether World to do. Do you not think he would be…satisfied? At peace?”
“At peace?” Stefan spat bitterly, and Sage growled.
“Woman,” he said, “you obviously have never met Damon Salvatore before.”
The tone in his voice — more resonant, more threatening somehow — made Elena finally break off her staredown with the red-haired Idola. She turned and looked — and saw the enormous room filled with Sage’s out-spread wings.
They weren’t like any of her ephemeral Wings Powers. They were clearly part of Sage. They were velvety and reptilian, and, unfurled like this, they stretched from distant wall to wall, and touched the grand, golden ceiling. They also demonstrated why Sage didn’t usually wear shirts.
He was beautiful this way, bronze skin and hair against those giant, leathery softlooking arches. But Elena, after one look at him, knew that the time had come to play the ace up her sleeve. She turned around to meet Idola’s green gaze squarely.
“All this time we’ve been bargaining for a Gatehouse full of treasures,” she said, “and — one Master Key.”
“A Master Key, stolen by the kitsune ages upon ages ago,” Susurre explained quietly, lifting her dark eyes.
“And you’ve said that it’s not enough for you to bring Damon back.” Elena forced her voice not to waver.
“Not even if it were your only request.” Ryannen tossed a golden lock of hair over her shoulder.
“So you say. But…what if I throw into the pot…another Master Key?”
There was a pause, and Elena’s heart began to pound in sick terror. Because it was the wrong kind of pause. There were no shocked gasps. No astonished glances from one Guardian ruler to another. No looks of disbelief.
After another moment Idola said smugly, “If you mean the other stolen key that your friends had on Earth — it was confiscated as soon as they hid it. It was stolen property. It belonged to us.”
She’s been here too long, in the Dark Dimensions, Elena thought with one part of her mind. She’s enjoying herself.
Idola leaned toward her, as if to confirm Elena’s guess. “It — simply — is notpossible,” she said emphatically.
“Really, it isn’t,” the fair Ryannen added briskly. “We don’t know what happens to vampires. But they don’t pass through our purview. We never see them after death.
The simplest explanation is that they just — go out.” She snapped her fingers.
“I don’t believe that!” Elena was aware that her voice had risen in volume. “I don’t believe that for one moment!”
Voices, not attached to anyone in particular, burst into a clamor of argument around Elena, forming a sort of poem: Not possible. It’s simply not possible! (But please…) No! Damon is gone, and to ask where is like asking where a candle flame goes when it’s blown out. (But shouldn’t you try to bring him back, at the least?) Whatever has happened to gratitude? You four should be grateful that the other things you asked for can be done. (But in exchange for both Master Keys—) No Power we can command could bring Damon back! Elena must try to reconcile herself to reality. She has been pampered too much already! (But what harm can it do to try again?) All right!
If you must know, Susurre has already forced us to try. And nothing came of it!
Damon…is…gone! His spirit was nowhere to be found in the ether! That is what happens to vampires, and everyone knows it!
Elena found herself looking down at her own hands, which were very clean but with broken nails and every knuckle bleeding. The outside world had become unreal again. She was inside herself, struggling with her grief, struggling with the knowledge that Idola, the central ruler of Guardians, hadn’t even mentioned before that they had looked for Damon’s spirit. And that it was…gone.
Suddenly, the room was pressing in on her. There wasn’t enough air. There were only these women: these powerful, magical Guardian women; who still did not have enough power or magic to save Damon — or at least didn’t even care enough to try twice.
She wasn’t sure what was happening to her. Her throat felt puffed out, her chest was both huge and tight. Each heartbeat sounded through her as if trying to shake her to death.
To death. In her mind’s eye, she saw a hand hold up a glass of Clarion Loess Black Magic.
And then, Elena knew that she had to stand a certain way, and hold her arms a certain way, and whisper certain words in her own mind. But the last, the naming of the spell, had only to be said aloud at the end.
At the end — when things slowed. When green-eyed Idola — what a perfect name for someone who idolized herself, Elena thought — and fair businesslike Ryannen and nurturing Susurre — all stared at her with open mouths, too shocked to move even a finger as, quietly and calmly, Elena said, “Wings of Destruction—” It was a soldier, just an ordinary one of the rank and file, one of the dark women, who stopped it. She leaped up onto the dais, and, with inhuman speed, slapped her hand over Elena’s mouth, so that the final syllable was a mumble, and the golden, green, and blue hall did not explode into fragments with hot metal running in rivulets like lava, and the flower-fountain did not vaporize, and the stained-glass windows didn’t shatter into atoms.
Then there were more arms around Elena, holding her down, scarcely letting her breathe, even when she went limp for lack of air. Elena fought like an animal, with her teeth and nails, to escape. But she eventually was completely restrained, pinned to the floor. She could hear Sage’s deep voice raging and Stefan, in between desperate telepathic bursts to her, pleading and explaining, “She’s still not in reality! She doesn’t even know what she’s doing!”
But louder, she could hear the voices of the Guardians. “She would have killed us all!” “Those Wings — I’ve never seen anything so deadly!” “A human! And with just three words, she could have wiped us out!” “If Lenea hadn’t tackled her—” “Or if she had been another few feet away—” “She destroyed a moon, you know! No life on it at all now, and ashes still falling from the sky!” “That isn’t the point. The point is that she shouldn’t have Wings powers at all. She’s got to be clipped of them.”
“That’s right — clip her Wings! Do it!”
Elena recognized Ryannen’s and Idola’s voices at the end there. She was still trying to fight, but they held her so tightly and piled on her so ruthlessly that it had become a fight simply to get air and all she did was exhaust herself.
And then they clipped her Wings. It was quick, at least, and Elena felt very little.
What hurt most was her heart. Some proud, stubborn streak had been brought out with the fighting, and now she was ashamed to feel each pair cut off. First went Wings of Redemption, those great rainbow-hued arches. Then Wings of Purification, white and iridescent as frosted cobwebs. Wings of the Wind, like honey-colored thistledown. Wings of Remembrance, soft violet and midnight blue.
And then Wings of Protection — emerald green and gold, the Wings that had saved her friends from Bloddeuwedd’s frenzied attack on them the first time they had entered the Dark Dimensions.
And, finally, Wings of Destruction — high, ebony arches with edges as delicate as black lace.
Elena tried to keep silent as each power was taken. But after the first one or two had fallen at her sides, in shadows that perhaps only she could see, she heard a small gasp, and realized that it was her own voice. And with the next cut, an involuntary little cry.
For a moment there was silence. And then suddenly there was overwhelming noise. Elena could hear Bonnie keening and Sage roaring, and Stefan, gentle Stefan, shouting blasphemies and curses at the Guardians. Elena guessed from the stifled sound of his voice that he was fighting them, fighting to get to her.
He reached her, somehow, just as the deadly, delicate Wings of Destruction were sheared from her shoulders and mind, and fell like tall shadows to the ground.
It was good that he did reach her then, because at last, when Elena was the least dangerous she had been since the Powers of Wings had begun awakening in her, suddenly the Guardians seemed afraid. They stepped back from her, these strong and dangerous women, and only Stefan was there to catch her and hold her in his arms.
Stunned, dazed, she was an eighteen-year-old girl who was ordinary. Except for her blood. They wanted to rob her of her blood as well…to “purify” it. The three rulers and their attendants had already gathered in a determined, multihued triangle around her and were working their magic when Sage bellowed, “Stop!”