about my traitor brother and his friends who sneak up on people with kekkai crowns…”
Elena couldn’t wait to debate about Damon now. “Won’t you look at me, at least?”
She saw him turn slowly, look slowly, then saw him leap up from a pallet made of sickly-looking hay, and saw him stare at her as if she were an angel dropped down from the sky.
Then he turned his back on her and put his hands over his ears.
“No bargains,” he said flatly. “Don’t even mention them to me. Go away. You’ve gotten better but you’re still a dream.”
“Stefan!”
“I said, go away!”
Time was wasting. And this was too cruel, after what she had been through just to speak to him.
“You first saw me just outside the principal’s office the day you brought your papers into school and influenced the secretary. You didn’t need to look at me to know what I looked like. Once I told you that I felt like a murderer because I said, ‘Daddy, look’ and pointed to — something outside — just before the car accident that killed my parents. I’ve never been able to remember what the something was. The first word I learned when I came back from the afterlife was Stefan. Once, you looked at me in the rear view mirror of the car and said that I was your soul….”
“Can’t you stop torturing me for one hour? Elena — the real Elena — would be too smart to risk her life by coming here.”
“Where’s ‘here’?” Elena said sharply, frightened. “I need to know if I’m supposed to get you out.”
Slowly Stefan uncovered his ears. Even more slowly he turned around again.
“Elena?” he said, like a dying boy who has seen a gentle ghost in his bed. “You’re not real. You can’t be here.”
“I don’t think I am. Shinichi made a magic house and it takes you wherever you want if you name it and open the door with this key. I said, ‘Somewhere I can hear and see and touch Stefan.’ But”—she looked down—“you say I can’t be here. Maybe it’s all an illusion anyway.”
“Hush.” Now Stefan was clenching the bars on his side of the cell.
“Is this where you’ve been? Is this the Shi no Shi?”
He gave a little laugh — not a real one. “Not exactly what either of us expected, is it? And yet, they didn’t lie in anything they said, Elena. Elena! I said ‘Elena.’ Elena, you’re really here!”
Elena couldn’t bear to waste any time. She took the few steps through damp, crackly straw and scampering creatures to the bars that separated her from Stefan.
Then she tilted up her face, clutching bars in either hand, and shut her eyes.
I will touch him. I will, I will. I’m real, he’s real — I’ll touch him!
Stefan leaned down — to humor her, she thought — and then warm lips touched hers.
She put her arms through the bars because they were both weak at the knees: Stefan in astonishment that she could touch him, and Elena in relief and sobbing joy.
But — there was no time.
“Stefan, take my blood now — take it!”
She looked desperately for something to cut herself with. Stefan might need her strength, and no matter what Damon had taken from her, she would always have enough for Stefan. If it killed her, she would have enough. She was glad, now, that in the tomb, Damon had persuaded her to take his.
“Easy. Easy, little love. If you mean it, I can bite your wrist, but…”
“Do it now!” Elena Gilbert, the princess of Fell’s Church, ordered. She had even gotten the strength to pull herself off her knees. Stefan gave her half a guilty glance.
“NOW!”Elena insisted.
Stefan bit her wrist.
It was an odd sensation. It hurt a little more than when he pierced the side of her neck as usual. But there were good veins down there, she knew; she trusted Stefan to find the largest so that this would take the least amount of time. Her urgency had become his.
But when he tried to pull back, she clutched a handful of his wavy dark hair and said, “More, Stefan. You need it — oh, I can tell, and we don’t have time to argue.”
The voice of command. Meredith had told her once that she had it, that she could lead armies. Well, she might need to lead armies to get into this place to save him.
I’ll get an army somewhere, she thought fuzzily.
The starving blood fever that Stefan had been in — they obviously hadn’t fed him since she had last seen him — was dying into the more normal blood-taking that she knew. His mind melted into hers.When you say you’ll get an army, I believe you. But it’s impossible. No one’s ever come back.
Well, you will. I’m bringing you back.
Elena, Elena…
Drink,she said, feeling like an Italian mother.As much as you can without being sick.
But how did — no, you told me how you got here. That was the truth?
The truth. I always tell you the truth. But Stefan, how do I get you out?
Shinichi and Misao — you know them?
Enough.
They each have half a ring. Together it makes a key. Each half is shaped like a running fox. But who knows where they may have hidden the pieces? And as I said, just to get into this place, it takes an army….
I’ll find the pieces of the fox ring. I’ll put them together. I’ll get an army. I’ll get you out.
Elena, I can’t keep drinking. You’ll collapse.
I’m good at not collapsing. Please go on.
I can hardly believe it’s you“No kissing! Take my blood!”
Ma’am! But Elena, truly, I’m full now. Overfull.
And tomorrow?
“I’ll still be overfull.” Stefan pulled away, a thumb on the places where he had pierced veins. “Truly, I can’t, love.”
“And the next day?”
“I’ll manage.”
“You will — because I brought this. Hold me, Stefan,” she said, several decibels softer. “Hold me through the bars.”
He did, looking bewildered, and she hissed in his ear, “Act like you love me. Stroke my hair. Say nice things.”
“Elena, lovely little love…” He was still close enough mentally to say telepathically: Act like I love you? But while his hands were stroking and squeezing and tangling in her hair, Elena’s own hands were busy. She was transferring from under her clothes to under his a flask full of Black Magic wine.
“But where did you get it?” Stefan whispered, seeming thunderstruck.
“The magic house has everything. I’ve been waiting for my chance to give it to you if you needed it.”
“Elena—”
“What?”
Stefan seemed to be struggling with something. At last, eyes on the ground, he whispered, “It’s no good. I can’t risk you getting killed for the sake of an impossibility. Forget me.”
“Put your face to the bars.”
He looked at her but didn’t ask any questions, obeying.
She slapped him across the face.
It wasn’t a very hard slap…although Elena’s hand hurt from colliding with the iron on either side.
“Now,be ashamed!” she said. And before he could say anything else,“Listen!”
It was the baying of hounds — far away, but getting closer.
“It’s you they’re after,” Stefan said, suddenly frantic. “You have to go!”
She just looked at him steadily. “I love you, Stefan.”
“I love you, Elena. Forever.”
“I — oh, I’m sorry.” She couldn’t go; that was the thing. Like Caroline talking and talking and never leaving
