little more than before. Shinichi was still smiling at him.
“So we have our deal,” he murmured. “We get the town, Misao and I, and you don’t stand in our way. We get the rights to the power of the ley lines. You get your girls safely out…and you get your revenge.”
“Against my sanctimonious brother and that…that Mutt!”
“Matt.” Shinichi had sharp ears.
“Whatever. I just won’t have Elena hurt, is all. Or the little red-headed witch.”
“Ah, yes, sweet Bonnie. I wouldn’t mind one or two like her. One for Samhain and one for the Solstice.”
Damon snorted drowsily. “There aren’t two like her; I don’t care where you look. I won’t have her hurt either.”
“And what about the tall, dark-haired beauty…Meredith?”
Damon woke up.“Where?”
“Don’t worry; she’s not coming to get you,” Shinichi said soothingly. “What do you want done with her?”
“Oh.” Damon lounged back again in relief, easing his shoulders. “Let her go her own way — as long as it’s far away from mine.”
Shinichi seemed to deliberately relax back against his branch. “Your brother will be no problem. So it’s really just that other boy down there,” he murmured. He had a very insinuating murmur.
“Yes. But my brother—” Damon was almost asleep now, in the exact position that Shinichi had taken.
“I told you, he’ll be taken care of.”
“Mm. I mean, good.”
“So we have a deal?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“We have a deal.”
This time, Damon didn’t respond. He was dreaming. He dreamed that Shinichi’s angelic golden eyes snapped open suddenly to look at him.
“Damon.” He heard his name, but in his dream it was too much trouble to open his eyes. He could see without opening them, anyway.
In his dream, Shinichi leaned over him, hovering directly over his face, so that their auras mixed and they would have shared breath if Damon had been breathing. Shinichi stayed that way a long time, as if he were testing Damon’s aura, but Damon knew that to an outsider he would appear to be out on all channels and frequencies. Still, in his dream Shinichi hung over him, as if he were trying to memorize the crescent of dark lashes on Damon’s pale cheek or the subtle curve of Damon’s mouth.
Finally, the dream-Shinichi put his hand under Damon’s head and stroked the spot where the mosquito bite had itched.
“Oh, growing up to be a fine big lad, aren’t you?” he said to something Damon couldn’t see — to something inside him. “You could almost take full control against his own strong will, couldn’t you?”
Shinichi sat for a moment, as if watching a cherry blossom fall, then shut his eyes.
“I think,” he whispered, “that that’s what we’ll try, not too long from now. Soon. Very soon. But first, we have to gain his trust; get rid of his rival. Keep him blurred, angry, vain, off balance. Keep him thinking of Stefan, of his hatred for Stefan, who took his angel, while I take care of what needs to be done here.”
Then he spoke directly to Damon. “Allies, indeed!” He laughed. “Not while I can put my finger on your very soul. Here. Do you feel it? What I could make you do…”
And then again he seemed to address whatever creature was already inside Damon: “But right now…a little feast to help you grow up much faster and get much stronger.”
In the dream, Shinichi made a gesture, and lay back, encouraging previously invisible malach to come up the trees. They slunk up and slid up the back of Damon’s neck. And then, hideously, they slipped inside him, one by one, through some cut he hadn’t known he had. The feeling of their soft, flabby, jellyfish-like bodies was almost unbearable…slipping inside of him….
Shinichi sang softly.
“Oh, come a’ tae me, ye fair pretty maidens Haste ye lassies tae my bosom Come tae me by sunlight or moonlight While the roses still are in blossom…”
In his dream, Damon was angry. Not because of the nonsense about malach inside him. That was ludicrous. He was angry because he knew that the dream-Shinichi was watching Elena as she began to pack up the remains of the picnic. He was watching every motion she made with an obsessive closeness.
“They blossom ever where you tread
…Wild roses bloody red.”
“Extraordinary girl, your Elena,” the dream-Shinichi added. “If she lives, I think she’ll be mine for a night or so.” He stroked the remaining strands of hair off Damon’s forehead gently. “Extraordinary aura, don’t you think? I’ll make sure her death is beautiful.”
But Damon was in one of those dreams where you can neither move nor speak. He didn’t answer.
Meanwhile, dream-Shinichi’s dream-pets continued to climb the trees and pour themselves, like Jell-O, inside him. One, two, three, a dozen, two dozen of them.More.
And Damon could not wake, even though he sensed more malach coming from the Old Wood. They were neither dead, nor living, neither man nor maiden, mere capsules of Power that would allow Shinichi to control Damon’s mind from far away. Endlessly, they came.
Shinichi kept watching the flow, the bright sparkle of internal organs sparkling into Damon. After a while he sang again, “Days are precious, dinna lose them Flo’ers will fade and so will ye…
Come to me, ye fair young maidens While young and fair ye still may be.”
Damon dreamed that he heard the word “forget” as if whispered by a hundred voices. And even as he tried to remember what to forget, it dissolved and disappeared.
He woke up alone in the tree, with an ache that filled his entire body.
Stefan was surprised to find Mrs. Flowers waiting for them when they returned from their picnic. And, also unusually, she had something to say that didn’t involve her gardens.
“There is a message for you upstairs,” she said, jerking her head toward the narrow staircase. “It came from a dark young fellow — he looked somewhat like you. He wouldn’t leave a word with me. Just asked where to leave a message.”
“Dark fellow? Damon?” Elena asked.
Stefan shook his head. “What would he want to be leaving me messages for?”
He left Elena with Mrs. Flowers and hastened up the crazy, zigzagging stairs. At the top he found a piece of paper stuffed under the door.
It was a Thinking of You card, sans envelope. Stefan, who knew his brother, doubted that it had been paid for — with money, at least. Inside, in heavy black felt-tipped pen, were the words:
DON’T NEED THIS.
THOUGHT ST. STEFAN MIGHT.
MEET ME TONIGHT AT THE TREE WHERE THE HUMANS CRASHED.
NO LATER THAN 4:30 A.M.
I’LL GIVE YOU THE SCOOP.
D.
That was all…except for a Web address.
Stefan was about to throw the note in the wastebasket when curiosity assailed him. He turned on the computer, directed it to the proper website, and watched. For a while, nothing happened. Then very dark gray letters on a black screen appeared. To a human, it would have appeared to be a completely blank screen. To vampires, with their higher visual acuity, the gray on black was faint but clear.
Tired of that lapis lazuli?
Want to take a vacation in Hawaii?
