The Return: Shadow Souls

shoulders. He was only one and a half or two inches taller than she was, so he had no trouble holding her eyes. “You, personally, take care of Elena. Tragedies happen here every minute of the day: unforeseeable, horrible, deadly tragedies. I do not want one happening to Elena.”

Meredith looked at him for a long moment, and for once didn’t consult Elena with her eyes before answering a question involving her. She simply said, “I’ll protect her,” in a low voice that nevertheless carried. From her stance, from her tone, one could almost hear the unspoken addition, “with my life”—and it didn’t even seem melodramatic.

Damon let go of her, strode out the door, and without a backward glance disappeared from Elena’s sight. But his mental voice was crystalline in her mind: You’ll be safe if there is any way to save you. I swear it.

If there was any way to save her. Wonderful. Elena tried to kickstart her brain.

Meredith and Bonnie were both staring at her. Elena took a deep breath, automatically sucked for a moment back into the old days, when a girl fresh from a hot date could expect a long and serious debriefing.

But all Bonnie said was, “Your face — it looks much better now!”

“Yes,” Elena said, using the two ends of her blouse to tie a makeshift top around her. “My leg’s the problem. We didn’t — didn’t finish it yet.”

Bonnie opened her mouth, but closed it determinedly, which from Bonnie was a display of heroics similar to Meredith’s promise to Damon. When she opened it again it was to say, “Take my scarf and tie it around your leg. We can fold it sideways and then tie a bow over the side that got hurt. That’ll keep pressure on it.”

Meredith said, “I think Dr. Meggar has finished with Ulma. Maybe he can see you.”

In the other room, the doctor was once again washing his hands, using a large pump to get more water into the basin. There were deeply red-stained cloths in a pile and a smell that Elena was grateful the doctor had camouflaged with herbs. Also in a large, comfortable-looking chair there sat a woman whom Elena did not recognize.

Suffering and terror could change a person, Elena knew, but she could never have realized how much — nor how much relief and freedom from pain could change a face. She had brought with her a woman who huddled until she was almost child-size in Elena’s mind, and whose thin, ravaged face, twisted with agony and unrelenting dread, had seemed almost a sort of abstract drawing of a goblin hag. Her skin had been sickly gray in color, her thin hair had scarcely seemed enough to cover her head, and yet it had hung down in strands like seaweed. Everything about her screamed out that she was a slave, from the iron bands around her wrists, to her nakedness and scarred, bloody body, to her bare and rusty feet. Elena could not even have told you the color of the woman’s eyes, for they had seemed as gray as the rest of her.

Now Elena was confronted by a woman who was perhaps in her early-to mid-thirties. She had a lean, attractive, somehow aristocratic face, with a strong, patrician nose, dark, keen-looking eyes, and beautiful eyebrows like the wings of a flying bird. She was relaxing in the armchair, with her feet up on an ottoman, slowly brushing her hair, which was dark with occasional streaks of gray that lent an air of dignity to the simple deep blue housecoat she was wearing. Her face had wrinkles that lent it character, but overall one sensed a sort of yearning tenderness about her, perhaps because of the slight bulge in her abdomen, which she now gently laid a hand on. When she did this her face bloomed with color and her whole aspect glowed.

For an instant Elena thought this must be the doctor’s wife or housekeeper and she had a temptation to ask whether Ulma, the poor wreck of a slave, had died.

Then she saw what one cuff of the deep blue housecoat could not quite conceal: a glimpse of an iron bracelet.

This lean dark aristocratic woman was Ulma. The doctor had worked a miracle.

A healer, he had called himself. It was obvious that, like Damon, he could heal wounds. No one who had been whipped as Ulma had could have come round to this state without some powerful magic. Trying to simply stitch up the bloody mess that Elena had brought in had obviously been impossible, and so Dr. Meggar had healed her.

Elena had never experienced a situation like this, so she fell back upon the good manners that had been bred into her as a Virginian.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m Elena,” she said, and held out her hand.

The brush fell onto the chair. The woman reached out with both hands to take Elena’s into hers. Those keen dark eyes seemed to devour Elena’s face.

“You’re the one,” she said, and then, swinging her slippered feet off the ottoman, she went down on her knees.

“Oh, no, ma’am! Please! I’m sure the doctor told you to rest. It’s best to sit quietly now.”

“But you are the one.” For some reason, the woman seemed to need confirmation. And Elena was willing to do anything to pacify her.

“I’m the one,” Elena said. “And now I think you should sit down again.”

Obedience was immediate, and yet there was a sort of joyful light about everything Ulma did. Elena understood it after only a few hours of slavery. Obeying when one had a choice was entirely different from obeying because disobedience could mean death.

But even as Ulma sat, she held out her arms. “Look at me! Dear seraph, goddess, Guardian — whatever you are: look at me! After three years of living as a beast I have become human again — because of you! You came like an angel of lightning and stood between me and the lash.” Ulma began to weep, but they seemed to be tears of joy. Her eyes searched Elena’s face, lingering on the scarred cheekbone. “But you’re no Guardian; they have magicks that protect them and they never interfere. For three years, they never interfered. I saw all my friends, my fellow slaves, fall to his whip and his rage.” She shook her head, as if physically unable to say Drohzne’s name.

“I’m so sorry — so sorry….” Elena was fumbling. She glanced back and saw that Bonnie and Meredith were similarly stricken.

“It doesn’t matter. I heard your mate killed him on the street.”

“I told her that,” Lakshmi said proudly. She had entered the room without anyone noticing her.

“My mate?” Elena faltered. “Well, he’s not my — I mean, he and I — we—”

“He’s our master,” Meredith said bluntly, from behind Elena.

Ulma was still looking at Elena with her heart in her eyes. “Every day, I will pray for your soul to ascend from here.”

Elena was startled. “Souls can ascend from here?”

“Of course. Repentance and good deeds may accomplish it, and the prayers of others are always taken into consideration, I think.”

You sure don’t talk like a slave, Elena mused. She tried to think of a way to put it delicately, but she was confused and her leg hurt and her emotions were in turmoil. “You don’t sound like — well, like what I’d expect from a slave,” she said. “Or am I just being an idiot?”

She could see the tears form in Ulma’s eyes.

“Oh, God! Please, forget I asked. Please—”

“No! There is no one I would rather tell. If you wish to hear how I came to this degraded state.” Ulma waited, watching Elena — it was clear that Elena’s least wish was to Ulma, a command.

Elena looked at Meredith and Bonnie. She couldn’t hear any more noises of yelling outside on the street and the building certainly didn’t seem to be on fire.

Fortunately, at that moment, Dr. Meggar wandered in again. “Everybody getting acquainted?” he asked, his eyebrows working in opposition now; one up, one down. He had the remnants of a bottle of Black Magic in his hand.

“Yes,” Elena said, “but I was just wondering if we should be trying to evacuate or anything. Apparently there was a mob—”

“Elena’s mate is going to give them something to think about,” Lakshmi said with relish. “They’ve all gone to the Meeting Place to resolve the stuff about Drohzne’s property. I bet he’ll bash a few heads in and be back in no time,” she added cheerfully, leaving no doubt as to he was. “Wish I was a boy so I could see it.”