"It's not a problem,"the fair ruler, Ryannen, said unexpectedly. "We can make it so that your Mr. Tanner repel ed an apparent vampire attack and the school cal ed in Alaric Saltzman to take his place and investigate. All right, Idola?" - to the redhead, and to the dark one - "All right, Susurre?"
Elena wasn't All right. Despite the example she'd just had of turn-on-a-dime plotting and scheming, she was scarcely listening. Al she knew was that her voice had gone husky and that tears blurred her eyes. "And...for the Master Key - I want - "
Stefan squeezed her hand. Elena suddenly realized that they were al standing, al three of them, beside her. And the look on every face was the same. Dead resolve.
"I want Damon back."Elena hadn't heard quite this note in her voice since the day she'd been told both her parents had died. If there had been a table, she would have put her clenched fists on it and did her best to loom over the women.
As it was, she simply leaned toward them, speaking in a low and grating voice. "If you do that - bring him back, exactly as he was before he walked into the Gatehouse - then you get the Master Key and the treasures. You say no - and you lose everything. Everything. This is non-negotiable, get it?"
She kept staring into Idola's green eyes. She refused to see dark Susurre drop her forehead onto three fingertips and begin to rub it in smal circles. She wouldn't give a glance to blond Ryannen, who was looking at her steadily, having gone into people-management mode. She stared directly into those green eyes under their wil ful eyebrows. Idola gave a little huff and shook her gorgeous head.
"Look, someone clearly has screwed up in preparing you for this interview."A glance at Susurre. "The other things you've asked for - al together, it forms a very heavy ransom. Do you understand that? Do you understand that it involves changing the memories of al the people for miles around your town, and changing them for every day of ten months?
That it means changing everything in print about Fel 's Church - and that there is a lot in print - not to mention other media outlets? It means begging for three human spirits and weaving flesh around them again. I'm not sure we even have the personnel for this - "
Blond Ryannen put a hand on the redhead's arm. "We have it. Susurre's women have little to do in the Nether World. I can lend you perhaps thirty percent of mine - after al , we're going to have to send up a petition to a higher Court for those spirits - "
Idola the redhead interrupted. "All right. What I was saying is that we might just be able to manage - if you throw in the Key. However, your vampire companion - we can't give life back to the lifeless. We can't work with vampires. Once they're gone - they're gone."
"That's what you tell us!"Stefan cried, trying to get in front of Elena. "But why are we so particularly damned, of al 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 kil the person who's real y behind al Shinichi and Misao did, but you can't bring one little vampire back? You brought Elena back!"
"Elena's death as a vampire al owed her to become the Guardian she was original y 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 Fel 's Church, who weakened her -
and to you, who destroyed her star bal ."
"Inari? You mean Isobel's grandma? You're saying it was her star bal 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 kil ed your friends. Yes - but what actual y killed her was having her star bal destroyed."
"So,"dark Susurre said quietly, "if you fol ow the curve...in a way your Damon did die to save Fel '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 final y break off her staredown with the red-haired Idola. She turned and looked - - and saw the enormous room fil ed 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 wal to wal , and touched the grand, golden ceiling. They also demonstrated why Sage didn't usual y wear shirts.
He was beautiful this way, bronze skin and hair against those giant, leathery soft-looking 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.
"Al this time we've been bargaining for a Gatehouse ful 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 not - possible,"she said emphatical y.
"Real y, 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 Stilldid 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 spel , 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 - al 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 syl able was a mumble, and the golden, green, and blue hal 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 eventual y 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 Stillnot in reality! She doesn't even know what she's doing!"
But louder, she could hear the voices of the Guardians. "She would have kil ed us al !""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 allnow, and ashes Stillfal ing 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 Stilltrying 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 al 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, final y, 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 fal en at her sides, in shadows that perhaps only she could see, she heard a smal 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 fel like tal 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 bel owed, "Stop!"
Elena, drooping over Stefan's shoulder, could see him vaguely, his velvety black wings Stillspread from wal to wal , Stilltouching the golden ceiling. Bonnie clung to him like a bit of stray dandelion fluff. "You have already diminished her aura to almost nothing,"he growled. "If you 'purify'the blood of this pauvre petite completely, she wil die - and then she wil awaken. You wil have created un vampire, Mesdames. Is that what you wish?"
Susurre reeled back. For the ruler of such a harsh and unyielding realm, she seemed almost too gentle - but not too soft to shear off my Wings, Elena thought, wriggling her shoulders to ease them. Maybe she didn't know how much it would hurt, another part of her mind offered vaguely.
Then al her mind came together in an emergency meeting.
Something warm and cooling was sliding down the back of her neck, in tiny droplets. Not blood. No, this was infinitely more precious than what the Guardians had taken away.