The Return: Shadow Souls

They hurried through this area of the docks, the girls with their eyes on their feet to prevent themselves from stumbling.

And then they crested a hill. Below them, in a sort of crater-shaped formation, was a city.

The slums were on the edges, and crowded almost up to where they were standing. But there was a chicken-wire fence in front of them, which kept them isolated even while allowing them a bird’s-eye view of the city. If they had still been in the cave they had entered, this would have been the greatest underground cavern imaginable — but they weren’t underground anymore.

“It happened sometime during the ferry ride,” Damon said. “We made — well — a twist in space, say.” He tried to explain and Elena tried to understand. “You went in through the Demon Gate, and when you came out you were no longer in Earth’s Dimension, but in another one entirely.” Elena only had to look up at the sky to believe him. The constellations were different; there was no Little or Big Dipper, no North Star.

Then there was the sun. It was much larger, but much dimmer than Earth’s, and it never left the horizon. At any moment about half of it showed, day and night — terms which, as Meredith pointed out, had lost their rational meaning here.

As they approached a gate made of chicken wire that would finally let them out of the slave-holding area, they were stopped by what Elena would later learn was a Guardian.

She would learn that in a way, the Guardians were the rulers of the Dark Dimension, although they themselves came from another place far away and it was almost as if they had permanently occupied this little slice of Hell, trying to impose order on the slum king and feudal lords who divided the city among themselves.

This Guardian was a tall woman with hair the color of Elena’s own — true gold — cut square at shoulder length, and she paid no attention at all to Damon but immediately asked Elena, who was first in line behind him, “Why are you here?”

Elena was glad, very glad, that Damon had taught her to control her aura. She concentrated on that while her brain hummed at supersonic speed, wondering what the right response to this question was. The response that would leave them free and not get them sent home.

Damon didn’t train us for this, was her first thought. And her second was, no, because he’s never been here before. He doesn’t know how everything works here, only some things.

And if it looked as if this woman was going to try to interfere with him, he might just go crazy and attack her, a helpful little voice added from somewhere in Elena’s subconscious. Elena doubled the speed of her scheming. Creative lying had once been a sort of specialty of hers, and now she said the first thing that popped into her head and got a thumbs-up: “I gambled with him and lost.”

Well, it sounded good. People lost all sorts of things when they gambled: plantations, talismans, horses, castles, bottles of genii. And if it turned out not to be enough of a reason, she could always say that that was just the start of her sad story. Best of all, it was in a way, true. Long ago she’d given her life for Damon as well as for Stefan, and Damon had not exactly turned over a new leaf as she’d requested. Half a leaf, maybe. A leaflet.

The Guardian was staring at her with a puzzled look in her true blue eyes. People had stared at Elena all her life — being young and very beautiful meant that you fretted only when people didn’t stare. But the puzzlement was a bit of a worry. Was the tall woman reading her mind? Elena tried to add another layer of white noise at the top. What came out was a few lines of a Britney Spears song. She turned the psychic volume up.

The tall woman put two fingers to her head like someone with a sudden headache. Then she looked at Meredith.

“Why…are you here?”

Usually Meredith didn’t lie at all, but when she did she treated it as an intellectual art. Fortunately, she also never tried to fix something that wasn’t broken. “The same for me,” she said sadly.

“And you?” The woman was looking at Bonnie, who was looking as if she were going to be sick again.

Meredith gave Bonnie a little nudge. Then she stared at her hard. Elena stared at her harder, knowing that all Bonnie had to do was mumble “Me, too.” And Bonnie was a good “me, too-er” after Meredith had staked out a position.

The problem was that Bonnie was also either in trance, or so close to it that it didn’t matter.

“Shadow Souls,” Bonnie said.

The woman blinked, but not the way you blink when someone says something totally unresponsive. She blinked in astonishment.

Oh, God, Elena thought. Bonnie’s got their password or something. She’s making predictions or prophesying or whatever.

“Shadow…souls?” the Guardian said, watching Bonnie closely.

“The city is full of them,” Bonnie said miserably.

The Guardian’s fingers danced over what looked like a palmtop computer. “We know that. This is the place they come.”

“Then you should stop it.”

“We have only limited jurisdiction. The Dark Dimension is ruled by a dozen factions of overlords, who have slumlords to carry out their orders.”

Bonnie, Elena thought, trying to cut through Bonnie’s mental haze even at the cost of the Guardian hearing her. These are the police.

At the same moment, Damon took over. “She’s the same as the others,” he said. “Except that she’s psychic.”

“No one asked your opinion,” the Guardian snapped at him, without even glancing in Damon’s direction. “I don’t care what kind of bigwig you are down there”—she jerked her head contemptuously at the city of lights —“you’re on my turf behind this fence. And I’m asking the little red-haired girl: is what he is saying the truth?”

Elena had a moment of panic. After all they’d been through, if Bonnie blew it now…

This time Bonnie blinked. Whatever else she was trying to communicate, it was true that she was the same as Meredith and Elena. And it was true that she was psychic. Bonnie was a terrible liar when she had too much time to think about things, but to this she could say without hesitation, “Yes, that’s true.”

The Guardian stared at Damon.

Damon stared back as if he could do it all night. He was a champion out-starer.

And the Guardian waved them away.

“I suppose even a psychic can have a bad day,” she said, then added to Damon, “Take care of them. You realize that all psychics have to be licensed?”

Damon, with his best grand seigneur manner, said, “Madam, these are not professional psychics. They are my private assistants.”

“And I’m not a ‘Madam’ I’m addressed as ‘Your Judgment.’ By the way, people addicted to gambling usually come to horrible ends here.”

Ha, ha, Elena thought. If she only knew what kind of gamble we all are taking… well, we’d probably be worse off than Stefan is right now.

Outside the fence was a courtyard. There were litters here, as well as rickshaws and small goatcarts. No carriages, no horses. Damon got two litters, one for himself and Elena and one for Meredith and Bonnie.

Bonnie, still looking confused, was staring at the sun. “You mean it never finishes rising?”

“No,” Damon said patiently. “And it’s setting here, not rising. Perpetual twilight in the City of Darkness itself. You’ll see more as we move along. Don’t touch that,” he added, as Meredith moved to untie the rope around Bonnie’s wrists before either of them got on the litter. “You two can take the ropes off in the litter if you draw the curtains, but don’t lose them. You’re still slaves, and you have to wear something symbolic around your arms to show it — even if it’s just matching bracelets. Otherwise I get in trouble. Oh, and you’ll have to go veiled in the city.”

“We—what?” Elena flashed a look of disbelief at him.

Damon just flashed back a 250-kilowatt smile and before Elena could say another word, he was drawing gauzy sheer fabrics from his black bag and handing them out. The veils were of a size to cover an entire body.

“But you only have to put it on your head or tie it on your hair or something,” Damon said dismissively.

“What’s it made of?” Meredith asked, feeling the light silky material, which was transparent and so thin that the wind threatened to whip it from her fingers.

“How should I know?”