courage — he let go of the pillowcase and grasped the end of the fighting stave with both hands.
Meredith raised an eyebrow. “Did I not just recently tell you that a number of those spikes you’ve just driven into your flesh are poisonous? Or were you not listening?”
She had automatically grabbed the stave as well, above the dangerous zone.
“You told me,” he said inscrutably — he hoped.
“I particularly said ‘poisonous to humans as well as to werewolves and other things’—recall it?”
“You told me that, too. But I’d rather die than live as a human, so: Let the games begin.” And with that, Damon began to push the two-headed stave toward Meredith’s heart.
She immediately clamped down on the stave as well, pushing it back toward him.
But he had three advantages, as they both soon realized. He was slightly taller and more strongly muscled even than lithe, athletic Meredith; he had a longer reach than hers; and he had taken up a much more aggressive position. Even though he could feel poisoned little spikes biting into his palms, he thrust forward and up until the killing point was once again near her heart. Meredith pushed back with an amazing amount of strength and then suddenly, somehow, they were even again.
Damon glanced up to see how that had happened, and saw, to his shock, that she also had grasped the stave in the killing zone. Now her hands were dripping blood onto the floor just as his were.
“Meredith!”
“What? I take my job seriously.”
Despite her gambit, he was stronger. Inch by inch, he forced his torn palms to hang on, his arms to exert pressure. And inch by inch she was forced backward, refusing to quit — until there was no more room to back up.
And there they stood, the entire length of the stave between them, and the refrigerator flat against Meredith’s back.
All Damon could think of was Elena. If he somehow survived this — and Meredith did not — then what would those malachite eyes say to him? How would he live with what they said?
And then, with infuriating timing, like a chess player knocking over her own king, Meredith let go of the spear, conceding Damon’s superior strength.
After which, seeming to have no fear of turning her back on him, she took a jar full of salve from a kitchen cupboard, scooped out a dollop of the contents, and motioned for Damon to hold out his hands. He frowned. He’d never heard of a poison that got into the blood that could be cured by external measures.
“I didn’t put real poison in the human needles,” she said calmly. “But your palms will be torn and this is an excellent remedy. It’s ancient, passed down for generations.”
“How kind of you to share,”—at his most sharply ironic.
“And now what are we going to do? Start all over again?” he added as Meredith calmly began to rub salve into her own hands.
“No. Hunter-slayers have a code, you know. You won the sphere. I assume you’re planning to do what Sage seems to have done. Open the Gate to the Dark Dimension.”
“Open the Gate to the Dark Dimensions,” he corrected. “Probably I should have mentioned — there’s more than one. But all I want is to become a vampire again.
And we can talk as we go, since I see we’re both wearing our cat burglar costumes.”
Meredith was dressed much as he was, in black jeans and a lightweight black sweater. With her long shining dark hair she looked unexpectedly beautiful. Damon, who had considered running her through with the stave, just as his obligation to vampire-kind, now found himself wavering. If she gave him no trouble on his way to the Gate, he would let her go, he decided. He was feeling magnanimous — for the first time he had faced down and conquered the fearsome Meredith, and besides, she had a code as he did. He felt a sort of kinship with her.
With ironic gallantry, he waved her on before him, retaining possession of the pillowcase and the fighting stave himself.
As Damon quietly shut the front door he saw that dawn was about to break.
Perfect timing. The stave caught the first rays of light. “I have a question for you,” he said to Meredith’s long, silky dark hair. “You said that you didn’t find this gorgeous stave until after Klaus — that wicked Old One — was dead. But if you’re from a hunter-slayer family you might have been more help in getting him dispatched. Like mentioning that only white ash could kill him.”
“It was because my parents didn’t actively pursue the family business — they didn’t know. They were both from hunter families, of course — you have to be, to keep it out of the tabloids and—”
“—police files—”
“Do you want me to talk, or can you do your stand-up routine alone?”
“Point taken”—hefting the extremely pointed stave. “I’ll listen.”
“But even though they chose not to be active, they knew that a vampire or werewolf might decide to pick on their daughter if they found out her identity. So during school, I took ‘harpsichord lessons’ and ‘riding lessons’ one day a week each — have done since I was three. I’m a Black Belt Shihan, and a Taekwondo Saseung. I might start Dragon Kung Fu—”
“Point taken once more. But then how exactly did you find that gorgeous killing stick?”
“After Klaus was dead, while Stefan was babysitting Elena, suddenly Grandpa started talking — just single words — but it made me go look in our attic. I found this.”
“So you really don’t know how to use it?”
“I’d just started practicing when Shinichi turned up. But, no, I don’t really have a clue. I’m pretty good with a bo staff, though, so I just use it like that.”
“You didn’t use it like a bo staff on me.”
“I was hoping to persuade you, not kill you. I couldn’t think of how to explain to Elena that I’d broken all your bones.”
Damon kept himself from laughing — barely.
“So how did a couple of inactive hunter-slayers end up moving to a town on top of a few hundred crossing ley lines?”
“I’m guessing they didn’t know what a line of natural Power was. And Fell’s Church looked small and peaceful — back then.”
They found the Gateway just as Damon had seen it before, a neat rectangular piece sliced out of the earth, about five feet deep.
“Now sit down there,” he adjured Meredith, putting her on the opposite corner from where he lay the stave.
“Have you given a thought — even the briefest — as to what will happen to Misao if you pour out all the liquid in there?”
“Actually, not one. Not one microsecond’s worth,” Damon said cheerfully. “Why?
Do you think she would for me?”
Meredith sighed. “No. That’s the problem with both of you.”
“She’s certainly your problem at the moment, although I may stop by sometime after the town’s destroyed to have a little tete-a-tete with her brother about the concept of keeping an oath.”
“After you’ve gotten strong enough to beat him.”
“Well, why don’t you do something? It’s your town they’ve devastated, after all,” Damon said. “Children attacking themselves and each other, and now adults attacking children—”
“They’re either scared to death or possessed by those malach the foxes are still spreading everywhere —”
“Yes, and so fear and paranoia keep spreading too. Fell’s Church may be little by the standards of other genocides they’ve caused, but it’s an important place because it’s sitting on top—”
“Of all those ley lines full of magical power — yes, yes, I know. But don’t you care at all? About us? Their future plans for us? Doesn’t any of it matter to you?”
Meredith demanded.
Damon thought of the still, small figure in the first-floor bedroom and felt a sick qualm. “I told you already,” he snapped. “I’m coming back for a talk with Shinichi.”
