The Return: Shadow Souls

that? There are some things there that it might be better for you to sleep through—”

“Then we’ll tell you we’ve changed our minds, and we’ll release you from the promise. You see? There’s no downside. You just have to swear.”

“All right,” Damon said, still holding her gaze. “I swear I won’t use any kind of Power on your minds; I won’t Influence you in any way, until you ask me to. I give my word.”

“Right.” At last Elena broke the stare down with the tiniest of smiles and nods. And Damon gave her an almost imperceptible nod in return.

She turned away to find herself looking into Bonnie’s searching brown gaze.

“Elena,” Bonnie whispered, tugging on her arm. “Come here for a sec, okay?” Elena could hardly help it. Bonnie was strong as a small Welsh pony. Elena went, casting a powerless look over her shoulder at Damon as she did.

“What?” she whispered when Bonnie finally stopped dragging her. Meredith had come along as well, figuring it might be sisterhood business. “Well?”

“Elena,” Bonnie burst out, as if unable to hold the words back any longer, “the way you and Damon act — it’s different than it used to be. You didn’t used to…I mean, what really happened between you two when you were alone together?”

“This is hardly the time for that,” Elena hissed. “We’re having a big problem here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“But — what if—”

Meredith took up the unfinished sentence, pushing a dark lock of hair out of her eyes. “What if it’s something Stefan doesn’t like? Like ‘what happened with Damon when you were alone in the motel that night’?” she finished, quoting Bonnie’s words.

Bonnie’s mouth fell open. “What motel? What night? What happened?” she almost shrieked, causing Meredith to try to quiet her and get bitten for her pains.

Elena looked at first one and then the other of her two friends — the two friends who had come to die with her if necessary. She could feel her breath come short. It was so unfair, but…“Can we just discuss this later?” she suggested, trying to convey with her eyes and eyebrows

Damon can hear us!

Bonnie merely whispered, “What motel? What night? What—”

Elena gave up. “Nothing happened,” she said flatly. “Meredith is only quoting you, Bonnie. You said those words last night while you were asleep. And maybe sometime in the future you’ll tell us what you’re talking about, because I don’t know.”

She finished by looking at Meredith, who just raised one perfect eyebrow. “You’re right,” Meredith said, completely undeceived. “The English language could use a word like ‘sa.’ It would make these conversations so much shorter, for one thing.”

Bonnie sighed. “Well, then, I’ll find out for myself,” she said. “You may not think I can, but I will.”

“Okay, okay, but meanwhile does anyone have anything helpful to say about Damon’s rope stuff?”

“Such as, do we tell him where to stuff it?” Meredith suggested under her breath.

Bonnie was holding a length of rope. She ran a small, fair-skinned hand over it.

“I don’t think this was bought in anger,” she said, her brown eyes unfocusing and her voice taking on the slightly eerie tone it always did when she was in trance. “I see a boy and a girl, over a counter at a hardware store — and she’s laughing, and the boy says, ‘I’ll bet you anything that you’re going to school next year to be an architect,’ and the girl gets all misty-eyed, and says, yes, and—”

“And that’s all the psychic spying I care to hear today.” Damon had come right up to them without making a sound. Bonnie jumped violently, and almost dropped the rope.

“Listen,” Damon continued harshly, “just a hundred meters away is the final crossing. Either you wear these and you act like slaves or you don’t get in to help Stefan. Ever. That’s it.”

Silently, the girls conferred with their eyes. Elena knew that her own expression said clearly that she wasn’t asking either Bonnie or Meredith to go with her, but that she herself was going if it required crawling behind Damon on her hands and knees.

Meredith, looking directly into Elena’s eyes, slowly shut her own and nodded, letting out her breath. Bonnie was nodding her head already, resigned.

In silence, Bonnie and Meredith let Elena tie their wrists in front of them. Elena then let Damon tie her wrists and thread a long rope between the three of them, as if they were a chain gang of prisoners.

Elena could feel a flush coming up from below her chest to burn in her cheeks. She couldn’t meet Damon’s eyes, not this way, but she knew without asking that Damon was thinking about the time that Stefan had dismissed him from his apartment like a dog, in front of just this audience, plus Matt.

Vengeful cad, Elena thought as hard as she could in Damon’s direction. She knew the last word would hurt the most. Damon prided himself on being a gentleman…

But “gentlemen” don’t go into the Dark Dimension, Damon’s voice in her head said mockingly.

“All right,” Damon added aloud, and took the lead rope in one hand. He started walking briskly into the darkness of the cave, the three girls crowding and stumbling behind him.

Elena would never forget that brief journey, and she knew neither Bonnie nor Meredith would either. They walked across the shallow opening of the cave and into the small opening in the back, which gaped like a mouth. It took some maneuvering to get the three of them into it. On the other side the cavern flared out again, and they were in a large cavern. At least that was what Elena’s enhanced senses told her. The everlasting fog had returned and Elena had no idea which way they were going.

Only a few minutes later a building reared up out of the thick fog.

Elena didn’t know what she had been expecting from the Demon Gate. Possibly huge ebony doors, carved with serpents and encrusted with jewels. Maybe a rough-hewn, weathered colossus of stone, like the Egyptian pyramids. Perhaps even some sort of futuristic energy field that flickered and flashed with blue-violet lasers.

What she saw instead looked like a ramshackle depot of some kind, a place for holding and shipping goods. There was an empty pen, heavily fenced, topped with barbed wire. It stank, and Elena was glad that she and Damon had not channeled power to her nose.

Then there were people, men and women in fine clothes, each with a key in one hand, murmuring something before opening a door in one side of the building. The same door — but Elena would bet anything that they weren’t all going to the same place, if the keys were like the one she had briefly “borrowed” from Shinichi’s house a week or so ago. One of the ladies looked as if she were dressed for a fancy masquerade, with fox ears that blended into her long auburn hair. It was only when Elena saw under her ankle-length dress the swishing of a fox tail that she realized that the woman was a kitsune making use of the Demon Gate.

Damon hastily — and none too gently — led them to the other side of the building, where a broken-hinged door opened into a dilapidated room that, strangely, seemed larger on the inside than on the outside. All sorts of things were being bartered or sold here: many looked as if they had to do with the management of slaves.

Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie looked at one another, round-eyed. Obviously, people bringing wild slaves in from the outside considered torture and terror all in a day’s work.

“Passage for four,” Damon said briefly to the slump-shouldered but heavyset man behind the counter.

“Three savages all at once?” The man, eyes devouring what he could see of the three girls, turned to look at Damon suspiciously.

“What can I say? My job is also my hobby.” Damon stared him straight in the eyes.

“Yeh, but…” The man laughed. “Lately we bin gettin’ maybe one or two a month.”

“They’re legally mine. No kidnappings. Kneel,” Damon added casually to the three girls.

It was Meredith who got it first and sank to the ground like a ballet dancer. Her dark, dark gray eyes were focused on something no one but she could see. Then Elena somehow untangled the single syllable from the others. She focused her mind on Stefan and pretended she was kneeling to kiss him on his prison pallet. It seemed to work; she was down.