didn’t believe them.
“Matt stands up, Elena sits, or the opposite one gets the full treatment. Have fun, kiddies.” Damon had the palm-camera out again.
Matt consulted Elena with his eyes. She looked at the imposter and said, enunciating carefully, “Go to hell, whoever you are.”
“Been there, done that, bought the brimstone,” the not-Damon creature rattled off. He gave Matt a smile that was both luminescent and terrifying. Then he waggled the pine branch.
Matt ignored it. He waited, his face stoic, for the pain to hit.
Elena struggled up to stand by him. Side by side, they could defy Damon.
Who seemed for a moment to be out of his mind. “You’re trying to pretend you’re not afraid of me. But you will be. If you had any sense, you would be now.”
Belligerently, he took a step toward Elena.“Why aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Whoever you are, you’re just an oversized bully. You’ve hurt Matt. You’ve hurt me. I’m sure you can kill us. But we’re not afraid of bullies.”
“You will be afraid.” Now Damon’s voice had dropped to a menacing whisper. “Just wait.”
Even as something was ringing in Elena’s ears, telling her to listen to those last words, to make a connection — who did that sound like? — the pain hit.
Her knees were knocked out by it. But she wasn’t just kneeling now. She was trying to roll into a ball, trying to curl around the agony. All rational thought was swept from her head. She sensed Matt beside her, trying to hold her, but she could no more communicate with him than she could fly. She shuddered and fell to her side, as if having a seizure. Her entire universe was pain, and she only heard voices as if they came from far away.
“Stop it!” Matt sounded frantic.“Stop it! Are you crazy? That’s Elena, for God’s sake! Do you want to kill her?”
And then the not-Damon-thing advising him mildly, “I wouldn’t try that again,” but the only sound Matt made was a scream of primal rage.
“Caroline!” Bonnie was raging, pacing back and forth in Stefan’s room while Meredith did something else with the computer. “How dare she?”
“She doesn’t dare try to attack Stefan or Elena outright — there’s the oath,” Meredith said. “So she’s thought this up to get at all of us.”
“But Matt—”
“Oh, Matt’s handy,” Meredith said grimly. “And unfortunately there’s the matter of the physical evidence on both of them.”
“What do you mean? Matt doesn’t—”
“The scratches, my dear,” put in Mrs. Flowers, looking sad, “from your razor-toothed bug. The poultice I put on will have healed them so that they’ll look like a girl’s fingernail scratches — about now. And the mark it left on your neck…” Mrs. Flowers coughed delicately. “It looks like what in my day was called a ‘love bite.’ Perhaps a sign of a tryst that ended in force? Not that your friend would ever do anything like that.”
“And remember how Caroline looked when we saw her, Bonnie?” Meredith said dryly. “Not the crawling around — I’ll bet anything she’s walking just fine now. But her face. She had a black eye coming in and a swollen cheek. Perfect for the time frame.”
Bonnie felt as if everyone was two steps ahead of her. “What time frame?”
“The night the bug attacked Matt. It was the morning after that that the sheriff called and talked to him. Matt admitted that his mother hadn’t seen him all night, and that Neighborhood Watch guy saw Matt drive up to his house and, basically, pass out.”
“That was from the bug poison. He’d just been fighting the malach!”
“We know that. But they’ll say he’d just come back from attacking Caroline. Caroline’s mother will hardly be fit to testify — you saw how she was. So who’s to say that Matt wasn’t over at Caroline’s? Especially if he was planning assault.”
“We are! We can vouch for him—” Bonnie suddenly stumbled to a halt. “No, I guess it was after he left that this was supposed to have happened. But, no, this is all wrong!” She took up pacing again. “I saw one of those bugs up close and it was exactly the way Matt described….”
“And what’s left of it now? Nothing. Besides, they’ll say that you would say anything for him.”
Bonnie couldn’t stand just walking aimlessly around anymore. She had to get to Matt, had to warn him — if they could even find him or Elena. “I thought you were the one who couldn’t wait a minute to find them,” she said accusingly to Meredith.
“I know; I was. But I had to look something up — and besides I wanted one more try at that page only vampires are supposed to read. The Shi no Shi one. But I’ve tweaked the screen in all the ways I can think of, and if there’s something written here, I certainly can’t find it.”
“Best not to waste more time on it, then,” Mrs. Flowers said. “Come get into your jacket, my dear. Shall we take the Yellow Wheeler or not?”
For just a moment Bonnie had a wild vision of a horse-drawn vehicle, a sort of Cinderella carriage but not pumpkin-shaped. Then she remembered seeing Mrs. Flowers’ ancient Model T — painted yellow — parked inside what must be the old stables that belonged to the boardinghouse.
“We did better when we were on foot than we or Matt did in a car,” said Meredith, giving the computer monitor controls a final vicious click. “We’re more mobile than — oh, my God!I did it! ”
“Did what?”
“The website. Come look at this.”
Both Bonnie and Mrs. Flowers came over to the computer. The screen was bright green with thin, faint, dark green writing.
“How did you do it?” Bonnie demanded as Meredith bent to get a notebook and pen to copy down what they saw.
“I don’t know. I just tweaked the color settings one last time — I’d already tried it for Power Saver, Low Battery, High Resolution, High Contrast, and every combination I could think of.”
They stared at the words.
Tired of that lapis lazuli?
Want to take a vacation in Hawaii?
Sick of that same old liquid cuisine?
Come and visit Shi no Shi.
After that came an ad for the “Death of Death,” a place where vampires could be cured of their cursed state and become human again. And then there was an address. Just a city road, no mention of what state, or, for that matter, what city. But it was a Clue.
“Stefan didn’t mention a road address,” Bonnie said.
“Maybe he didn’t want to scare Elena,” Meredith said grimly. “Or maybe, when he looked at the page, the address wasn’t there.”
Bonnie shivered. “Shi no Shi — I don’t like the sound of it. And don’t laugh at me,” she added to Meredith defensively. “Remember what Stefan said about trusting my intuition?”
“Nobody’s laughing, Bonnie. We need to get to Elena and Matt. What does your intuition tell you about that?”
“It says that we’re going to get into trouble, and that Matt and Elena are in trouble already.”
“Funny, because that’s just what my judgment tells me.”
“Are we ready, now?” Mrs. Flowers handed out flashlights.
Meredith tried hers and found it had a strong, steady beam.
“Let’s do it,” she said, automatically flipping off Stefan’s lamp again.
Bonnie and Mrs. Flowers followed her down the stairs, out of the house, and onto the street they had run from not so long ago. Bonnie’s pulse was racing, her ears ready for the slightest whipwhip sound. But except for the beams of their flashlights, the Old Wood was completely dark and eerily silent. Not even the sound of birdsong broke the moonless night.
They plunged in, and in minutes they were lost.
Matt woke up on his side and for a moment didn’t know where he was. Outdoors. Ground. Picnic? Hiking? Fell
