The Return: Shadow Souls

Shut up, she told her mind sharply.

“Sage!”

“Madame?”

“Can Talon see the man I’m holding by the hair?” She had to go on tiptoe to grasp him.

“But of course, Madame!”

“Can she remember him? If I can’t find Stefan I want her to show him to Saber so he can track him.”

“Uh…ah…got it, Madame!”

A hand, dripping blood from the wrist, lifted a falcon high, at the same time as there was a serendipitous crash from the top of the building.

The vampire was almost sobbing. “Turn r-right at the n-next right. Use the k-key in the slot at h-head height to g-get into the corridor. There m-may be guards there. But…if — if you don’t have a key to the individual cell you want — I’m sorry, but—”

“I do! I have the cell key and I know what to do after that! Thank you, you’ve been very kind and helpful.”

Elena let go of the vampire’s hair.

“Sage! Damon! Bonnie! Look for a corridor, locked, going right. Then don’t get swept away. Sage, hold Bonnie and have Saber bark like crazy. Bonnie, hold on to Meredith in front of the guys. The corridor leads to Stefan!”

Elena never knew how much any one of her allies heard of this message, sent by voice and telepathy. But ahead she heard a sound that to her was like choirs of angels singing.

Saber was barking madly.

Elena would never have been able to stop by herself. She was in a raging river of people and the raging river was taking her right around the barrier made by four people, a falcon, and a mad-seeming dog.

But eight hands reached out to her as she was swept by — and a snarling, snapping muzzle leaped ahead of her to divide the crowd. Somehow she was being run into, bruised, cradled, shoved, and, grasped and grasping, forced all the way to the right wall.

But Sage was looking at that same wall in despair. “Madame, he tricked you! There is no keyhole here!”

Elena’s throat went raw. She prepared to shout, “Saber, heel,” and go after the vampire.

But then, just below her, Bonnie’s voice said, “Of course there is. It’s shaped like a circle.”

And Elena remembered.

Smaller guards. Like imps or monkeys. Bonnie’s size.

“Bonnie, take this! Shove it into the hole. Be careful! It’s the only one we’ve got.”

Sage immediately directed Saber to stand and snarl just ahead of Bonnie in the tunnel, to keep the stream of panicked demons and vampires from jostling her.

Carefully, solemnly, Bonnie took the large key, examined it, cocked her head, turned it in her hands — and placed it in the wall.

“Nothing’s happening!”

“Try turning or pushing—”

Click.

The door slid open.

Elena and her group more or less fell into the corridor, while Saber stood between them and the herd pounding by, barking and snapping and leaping.

Elena, lying on the ground, legs entwined with who-knew-who-else’s, cupped a hand around her ring.

The fox eyes shone straight ahead and a bit to the right.

They were shining into a cell ahead.

41

“Stefan!” Elena screamed and knew that she sounded like a madwoman when she screamed it.

There was no answer.

She was running. Following the light. “Stefan! Stefan!”

An empty cell.

A yellowed mummy.

A pyramid of dust.

Somehow, subconsciously, she suspected one of these things. And any one would have caused her to run out to fight Bloddeuwedd with her bare hands.

Instead, when she reached the right cell, she saw a weary young man, whose face showed that he had given up all hope. He lifted a stick-thin arm, rejecting her utterly.

“They told me the truth. You were exported for aiding a prisoner. I’m not susceptible to dreams anymore.”

“Stefan!” She fell to her knees. “Do we have to go through this every single time?”

“Do you know how often they re-create you, bitch?”

Elena was shocked. More than shocked. But the next moment the hatred had faded from his face.

“At least I get to look at you. I had…I had a picture. But they took that, of course. They cut it up, very slowly, making me watch. Sometimes they made me cut it. If I didn’t cut it, they would—”

“Oh, darling! Stefan, darling! Look at me. Listen to the prison. Bloddeuwedd is destroying it. Because I’ve stolen the other half of your key from her nest, Stefan, and I am not a dream. Do you see this? Did they ever show you this?” She held out the hand with the double fox ring on it. “Now — now — where do I put it?”

“You are warm. The bars are cold,” Stefan said, clutching her hand and speaking as if reciting out of a children’s book.

“Here!” Elena cried triumphantly. She didn’t need to take the ring off. Stefan was holding her other hand, and this lock worked like a seal ring. She placed it straight into a circular depression in the wall. Then, when nothing happened, she turned it right. Nothing. Left.

The cell bars slowly began to lift into the ceiling.

Elena couldn’t believe it and for an instant thought she was hallucinating. Then when she turned sharply to look at the ground she saw that the bars were already at least a foot above it.

Then she looked at Stefan, who was standing again.

Both of them fell back to their knees. They would have both gotten down and wriggled like snakes if necessary, the need to touch was so great. The horizontal struts on the bars made it impossible for them to hold hands as the bars lifted.

Then the bars were over the top of Elena’s head and she was holding Stefan—she was holding Stefan in her arms! — appalled to feel bones under her hands, but holding him, and no one could tell her he was a hallucination or a dream, and if she and Stefan had to die together, then they would die together. Nothing mattered but that they not be separated again.

She covered the unfamiliar, bony face with kisses. Strange, no half-grown, gone-to-the-wild beard, but vampires didn’t grow beards unless they had them when they became vampires.

And then there were other people in the cell. Good people. People laughing and crying and helping her create a makeshift litter out of stinking blankets and Stefan’s pallet and no one screamed when lice jumped on them because everyone knew that Elena would have turned and ripped their throat out like Saber. Or rather, like Saber, but as Ms. Courtland had always said, with feeling. To Saber it was just a job.

Then somehow — things had begun to become disconnected — Elena was watching Stefan’s beloved face and gripping his litter, and running — he didn’t weigh anything — up a different corridor than the one she’d fought and shouldered and pushed and floundered in on her way in. Apparently all the Shi no Shi’s salmon had chosen the other corridor to swim up. Undoubtedly there was a safe place for them at the end on that side.

And even as Elena wondered how a face could be so pure, and handsome, and perfect, even when it looked almost like a skull, she was thinking, I can run and stoop. And she bent over Stefan and her hair made a shield around them, so that it was just the two of them inside it. The entire outside world was shut out, and they were