The Return: Shadow Souls

It was an entirely different voice than the flat, nasal, but still maidenlike tones that had greeted Elena before. This was a powerful voice, a heavy voice…

…a voice to go with the size of the nest.

Elena looked up. She couldn’t make anything of what she saw. An enormous fur coat in a very exotic pattern? Some huge stuffed animal’s back?

The creature in the library turned toward her. Or rather, its head swiveled toward her, while its back remained perfectly still. It rotated its head sideways and Elena knew that what she was seeing was a face. The head was even more hideous and more indescribable than she could have imagined. It had a sort of single eyebrow which dipped from the edge of one side of its forehead down toward the nose (or where the nose should have been) and then went up again. The feature was like a gigantic V-shaped brow and below it were two huge round yellow eyes that often blinked. There was no nose or mouth like a human’s, but instead there was a large, cruel, hooked black beak. The rest of the face was covered in feathers, mostly white, turning mottled gray at the bottom, where the neck seemed to be. It was also gray and white in two hornlike projections that shot up from the top of the head — like a demon’s horns, Elena thought wildly.

Then, with the head still staring at her, the body turned toward Elena.

It was the body of a sturdy woman, covered in white and grizzled feathers, Elena saw. Talons peeked out from under the lowest feathers.

“Hello,” the creature said in a grating voice, its beak opening and closing to bite off the words. “I’m Bloddeuwedd, and I never let anyone touch my library. I am your death.”

The words Can’t we at least talk about it first? were on Elena’s lips. She didn’t want to be a hero. She certainly didn’t want to take on Bloddeuwedd while searching for the key that must be here — somewhere.

Elena kept on trying to explain while frantically feeling inside the nest, when Bloddeuwedd extended wings that spanned the room and came at her.

And then, like a streak of lightning, something zipped between them, giving out a raucous cry.

It was Talon. Sage must have given the hawk orders when he left her.

The owl seemed to shrink a little — the better to attack, thought

Elena.

“Please let me explain. I haven’t found it yet, but there is something in your nest that doesn’t belong to you. It’s mine — and — and Stefan’s. And the kitsune hid it the night you had to chase them off your estate. Do you remember that?”

Bloddeuwedd didn’t answer for a moment. Then she showed that she had a simple, one-size-fits-all- situations philosophy.

“You set foot into my private quarters. You die,” she said and this time when she swooped by Elena, Elena could hear the clack of her beak coming together.

Again something small and bright dove at Bloddeuwedd, aiming for her eyes. The great owl had to take her attention off Elena in order to deal with it.

Elena gave up. Sometimes you just needed help. “Talon!” she cried, unsure of how much human speech Talon understood. “Try to keep her occupied — just for a minute!”

As the two birds darted and wheeled and shrieked around her, Elena tried to search with her arms, while ducking when she needed to. But that great black beak was always too close. Once it sliced into her arm, but Elena was on an adrenaline high, and she hardly felt the pain. She kept searching without a pause.

Finally, she realized what she should have done from the beginning. She snatched up an orb from its transparent rack.

“Talon!” she called. “Here!”

The falcon dove down toward her and there was a snap. But afterward Elena still had all her fingers and the hoshi no tama was gone.

Now, now, Elena truly heard a shriek of rage from Bloddeuwedd. The giant owl went after the hawk, but it was like a human trying to slap a fly — an intelligent fly.

“Give that orb back! It’s priceless! Priceless!”

“You’ll get it back as soon as I find what I’m looking for.” Elena, mad with terror and soaked in hormones, climbed all the way inside the nest and began searching the marble bottom with her fingers.

Twice Talon saved her by dropping orbs with a crash to the ground as the huge owl Bloddeuwedd was headed toward Elena. Each time, the noise of the crash caused the owl to forget about Elena and try to attack the hawk. Then Talon snatched another orb and swept at great speed right under the owl’s nose.

Elena was beginning to have a nightmare feeling that everything she had known just a half hour before was wrong.

She had been leaning against the canopy pole, exhausted, staring up into the library and the maiden who inhabited it and the words had simply flowed into her mind.

Bloddeuwedd’s orb room…

Bloddeuwedd’s globe room…

Bloddeuwedd’s…star ball room……Bloddeuwedd’s ballroom.

Two ways to take the same words. Two very different kinds of rooms.

It was just as she was remembering this that her fingers touched metal.

38

“Talon! Uh — heel!” Elena shouted and began to race as fast as she could to get out of the room. This was strategy. Would the owl become even smaller so as to get through the door or would it destroy its sanctuary in order to stay on top of Elena?

It was a good strategy, but it didn’t amount to much in the end. The owl shrank to dart through the door, and then resumed gigantic size to attack Elena as she ran down the stairs.

Yes, ran. With all of her Power channeled to her eyes, Elena leaped from step to step as Damon had before. Now there was no time for fear, no time for thinking. There was only time to turn over in her fingers a small, hard, crescent-shaped object.

Shinichi and Misao — they did make it into her nest.

There must be a ladder or something made of glass that even Damon couldn’t see, in the flowerbed where Saber had stopped and barked. No — Damon would have seen it, so they must have brought their own ladder.

That’s why their trail ended there. They climbed straight up into the library. And they ruined the flowers in the bed, which is why the new flowers weren’t doing so well.

Elena knew from Aunt Judith, from her childhood, that transplanted flowers took awhile to revive and perk up again.

Leap…jump…leap…I am a spirit of fire. I cannot miss a step. I am a fire elemental. Leap…leap…leap.

And then Elena was looking at level ground, trying not to leap into it, but a prisoner to her body which was already leaping. She fell hard enough to numb one side, but she kept hold of the precious crescent clenched in a deathgrip in her hand.

A gigantic beak smashed into glass where she had been a moment before she slid. Talons raked her back.

Bloddeuwedd was still after her.

Sage and his group of sturdy young male and female vampires traveled at the pace of a running dog. Saber could lead them, but only as fast as he himself could go. Fortunately few people seemed to want to instigate a fight with a dog that weighed as much as they did — that weighed more than many of the beggars and children they encountered as they reached the bazaar.

The children crowded around the carriage, slowing them further. Sage took the time to exchange an expensive jewel for a purse full of small change and he scattered the coins behind the carriage as they went, allowing Saber free reign.

They passed dozens of stalls and crossing streets, but Saber was no ordinary bloodhound. He had enough Power to confound most vampires. With perhaps only one or two of the key molecules stuck to his nasal membrane he could hunt down his goal. Where another dog might be fooled by one of the hundreds of similar kitsune trails