The Return: Shadow Souls

Side. Who knew—?

The lash that was raised never descended. Before it could, there was a flash of black lightning — pure Power — that sent half the crowd scattering. A vampire, young in appearance and dressed in the clothing of the upper world, Earth, had made his way to stand between the golden girl and the slave owner — or rather to loom over the now cringing slave owner. The few in the crowd not stirred by the girl immediately felt their hearts pulse at the sight of him. He was the girl’s owner, surely, and now he would see to the situation.

At that instant, Bonnie and Meredith arrived on the scene. They were reclining on their litter, decorously draped in their veils, Meredith in starry midnight blue and Bonnie in soft pale green. They could have been an illustration for The Arabian Nights.

But the moment they saw Damon and Elena, they most indecorously jumped off the litter. By now the crowd was so thick that working their way to the front required using elbows and knees, but in only seconds they were at Elena’s side, hands defiantly unbound or trailing rope that hung defiantly free, veils floating in the wind.

When they did arrive beside Elena, Meredith gasped. Bonnie’s eyes opened wide and stayed that way. Elena understood what they were seeing. Blood was flowing freely from the cut across her cheekbone and her blouse kept opening in the wind to reveal her torn and bloody camisole. One leg of her jeans was rapidly turning red.

But, drawn up into the protection of her shadow, was a far more pitiful figure. And as Meredith raised Elena’s diaphanous veil to help keep her blouse closed and once more enshroud her in decency, the woman herself raised her head, to look at the three girls with the eyes of a dumb and hunted animal.

Behind them, Damon said softly, “I shall quite enjoy this,” as he lifted the heavy man into the air with one hand and then struck his throat like a cobra. There was a hideous scream, which went on and on.

No one tried to interfere, and no one tried to cheer the slave owner on to make a fight.

Elena, scanning the faces of the crowd, realized why. She and her friends had become used to Damon — or as used as you could become to his half-tamed air of ferocity. But these people were getting their first look at the young man dressed all in black, of medium height and slim build, who made up for his lack of bulging muscle with a supple and deadly grace. This was enhanced by the gift of somehow dominating all the space around him, so that he effortlessly became the focal point of any picture — the way a black panther might become the focal point if it were walking lazily down a crowded city street.

Even here, where menace and an aspect of outright evil were commonplace, this young man exuded a quality of danger that made people want to stay out of his line of sight, much less his way.

Meanwhile Elena and both Meredith and Bonnie were looking around for some sort of medical assistance, or even for something clean that would staunch wounds. After about a minute, they realized that it wasn’t just going to appear, so Elena appealed to the crowd.

“Does anyone know a doctor? A healer?” she shouted. The audience merely watched her. They seemed loath to get involved with a girl who had obviously defied the black-clad demon now wringing the slave owner’s neck.

“So you all think it’s just fine,” Elena shouted, hearing the loss of control, the disgust and fury in her own voice, “for a bastard like that to be whipping a starving pregnant woman?”

There were a few downcast eyes, a few scattered replies on the theme of “He was her master, wasn’t he?” But one youngish man who had been leaning against a stopped wagon, straightened up. “Pregnant?” he repeated. “She doesn’t look pregnant!”

“She is!”

“Well,” the young man said slowly, “if that’s true, he’s only harming his own merchandise.” He glanced nervously over to where Damon was now standing above the deceased slave owner, whose face was cast into a ghastly death grimace of agony.

This still left Elena with no help for a woman she was afraid was about to die. “Doesn’t anyone know where I can find a doctor?” There were now mutterings in various tones from the crowd members.

“We might get further on if we could offer them some money,” Meredith was saying. Elena immediately reached for her pendant, but Meredith was quicker, unfastening a fancy amethyst necklace from around her neck and holding it up. “This goes to whoever shows us a good doctor first.”

There was a pause while everyone seemed to be assessing the reward and the risk. “Don’t you have any star balls?” a wheezing voice asked, but a high, light voice cried, “That’s good enough for me!”

A child — yes, a genuine street urchin — darted to the front of the crowd, grabbed Elena’s hand and pointed, saying, “Dr. Meggar, right up the street. It’s only a couple of blocks; we can walk it.”

The child was wrapped in a tattered old dress, but that might only be to keep warm, because he or she was also wearing a pair of trousers. Elena couldn’t even figure out whether it was a boy or a girl until the child gave her an unexpectedly sweet smile and whispered, “I’m Lakshmi.”

“I’m Elena,” Elena said.

“Better hurry, Elena,” Lakshmi said. “Guardians will get here soon.”

Meredith and Bonnie had gotten the dazed slave woman to her feet, but she seemed to be in too much pain to understand if they meant to help her or kill her.

Elena remembered how the woman had huddled in the shadow of Elena’s own body. She put a hand on the woman’s bloody arm and said quietly, “You’re safe now. You’re going to be fine. That man — your…your master — is dead and I promise that nobody will hurt you again. I swear it.”

The woman stared at her in disbelief, as if what Elena was saying was impossible. As if living without being beaten constantly — even with all the blood Elena could see old scars, some of them like cords, on the woman’s skin — was something too far from reality to imagine.

“I swear it,” Elena said again, not smiling, but grimly. She understood that this was a burden she was taking on for life.

It’s all right, she thought, and realized that for some time now she had been sending her thoughts to Damon. I know what I’m doing. I’m ready to be responsible for this.

Are you sure? Damon’s voice came to her, as uncertain as she’d ever heard him. Because I’m sure as hell not going to take care of some old hag when you get tired of her. I’m not even sure I’m ready to deal with whatever it’s going to cost me for killing that bastard with the whip.

Elena turned to look at him. He was serious. Well, then why did you kill him? she challenged.

Are you joking? Damon gave her a shock with the vehemence and venom of his thought. He hurt you. I should have killed him more slowly, he added, ignoring one of the litter bearers who was kneeling beside him, undoubtedly asking what to do next. Damon’s eyes, however, were on Elena’s face, on the blood still flowing from her cut. Il figlio de cafone, Damon thought, his lips drawing back from his teeth as he looked down on the corpse, so that even the litter bearer scurried away on hands and knees.

“Damon, don’t let him leave! Bring them all over here right now—” Elena began, and then, as there was a sort of universal gasp around her, she continued nonverbally, Don’t let the litter bearers leave. We need a litter to carry this poor woman to the doctor. And why is everyone staring at me?

Because you’re a slave, and you’ve just done things no slave should do and now you’re giving me, your master, orders. Damon’s telepathic voice was grim.

It’s not an order. It’s a — look, any gentleman would help a lady in distress, right? Well, there are four of us over here and one is more distressed than you want to look at. No, three are. I think I’m going to need some stitches, and Bonnie is about to collapse. Elena was striking methodically at weak points, and knew that Damon knew she was doing it. But he ordered one of the sets of litter bearers to come and pick up the slave woman and the other to take his girls.

Elena stuck with the woman and ended up in a litter with the curtains all closed around it. The smell of blood was a copper taste in her mouth, making her want to cry. Even she didn’t want to look closely at the slave woman’s injuries, but blood was running onto the litter. She found herself taking off her blouse and camisole and putting back only the blouse so that she could use the camisole to hold to a great diagonal slash across the woman’s chest.