“May I ask a question?” Meredith said in her low, calm voice. “Not about the warrant,” she added, waving the paper away. “How is it out there in Fell’s Church?
Do you know what’s going on?”
She was buying time, Elena thought, and yet everyone stopped to hear the answer.
“Mayhem,” the female sheriff replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s like a war zone out there. Worse than that because it’s the kids who are—” She broke off and shook her head. “That’s not our business. Our business is finding a fugitive from justice. But first, as we were driving toward your hotel we saw a very bright column of light. It wasn’t from a helicopter. I don’t suppose you know anything about what it was?”
Just a door through space and time, Elena was thinking, as Meredith answered, still calmly, “Maybe a power transmitter blowing up? Or a freak shaft of lightning?
Or are you talking about…a UFO?” She lowered her already soft voice.
“We don’t have time for this,” the male sheriff said, looking disgusted. “We’re here to find this Honeycutt man.”
“You’re welcome to look,” Mrs. Flowers said. They were already doing so.
Elena felt shocked and nauseated on two fronts. “This Honeycutt man.” Man, not boy. Matt was over eighteen. Was he still a juvenile? If not, what would they do to him when they eventually caught up to him?
And then there was Stefan. Stefan had been so certain, so…convincing…in his announcements about being well again. All that talk about going back to hunting animals — but the truth was that he needed much more blood to recover.
Now her mind spun into planning mode, faster and faster. Stefan obviously wasn’t going to be able to Influence both of those officers without a very large donation of human blood.
And if Elena gave it…the sick feeling in her stomach increased and she felt the small hairs on her body stand up…if she gave it, what were the chances that she would become a vampire herself?
High, a cool, rational voice in her mind answered. Very high, considering that less than a week ago, she had been exchanging blood with Damon. Frequently.
Uninhibitedly.
Which left her with the only plan she could think of. These sheriffs wouldn’t find Matt, but Meredith and Bonnie had told her the whole story of how another Ridgemont sheriff had come, asking about Matt — and about Stefan’s girlfriend. The problem was that she, Elena Gilbert, had “died” nine months ago. She shouldn’t be here — and she had a feeling that these officers would be inquisitive.
They needed Stefan’s Power. Right now. There was no other way, no other choice. Stefan. Power. Human blood.
She moved to Meredith, who had her dark head down and cocked to one side as if listening to the two sheriffs clomping above on the stairs.
“Meredith—” Meredith turned toward her and Elena almost took a step back in shock.
Meredith’s normally olive complexion was gray, and her breath was coming fast and shallowly.
Meredith, calm and composed Meredith, already knew what Elena was going to ask of her. Enough blood to leave her out of control as it was being taken. And fast.
That terrified her. More than terrified.
She can’t do it, Elena thought. We’re lost.
Damon was making his way up the beautiful rose-covered trellis below the window of the bedchamber of M. le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne, a very wealthy, beautiful, and much-admired girl who had the bluest blood of any vampire in the Dark Dimension, according to the books he’d bought. In fact, he’d listened to the locals and it was rumored that Sage himself had changed her two years ago, and had given her this bijoux castle to live in. Delicate gem that it appeared, though, the little castle had already presented Damon with several problems. There had been that razor-wire fence, on which he ripped his leather jacket; an unusually dexterous and stubborn guard whom it had really been a pity to strangle; an inner moat that had almost taken him unawares; and a few dogs that he had treated with the Sabertranquilizer routine — using Mrs. Flowers’s sleeping powder, which he’d brought with him from Earth. It would have been easier to poison them, but Jessalyn was reputed to have a very soft heart for animals and he needed her for at least three days. That should be long enough to make him a vampire — if they did nothing else during those days.
Now, as he pulled himself silently up the trellis, he mentally added long rose thorns to the list of inconveniences. He also rehearsed his first speech to Jessalyn. She had been — was — would forever be — eighteen. But it was a young eighteen, since she had only two years’ experience at being a vampire. He comforted himself with this as he climbed silently into a window.
Still silently, moving slowly in case the princess had guardian animals in her bedchamber, Damon parted layer after layer of filmy, translucent black curtains that kept the blood-red light of the sun from shining into the chamber. His boots sank into the thick pile of a black rug. Making it out of the enfolding curtains, Damon saw that the entire chamber was decorated in a simple theme by a master of contrast. Jet-black and off-black.
He liked it a lot.
There was an enormous bed with more billowing filmy black curtains almost encasing it. The only way to approach it was from the foot, where the diaphanous curtains were thinner.
Standing there in the cathedral-like silence of the great chamber, Damon looked at the slight figure under the black silk sheets, among dozens of small throw pillows.
She was a jewel like the castle. Delicate bones. A look of utter innocence as she slept. An ethereal river of fine, scarlet hair spilling about her. He could see individual hairs straying on the black sheets. She looked a little like Bonnie.
Damon was pleased.
He pulled out the same knife he had put to Elena’s throat, and just for a moment hesitated — but no, this was no time to be thinking of Elena’s golden warmth.
Everything depended on this fragile-shouldered child in front of him. He put the point of the knife to his chest, deliberately placing it wide of his heart in case some blood had to be spilled…and coughed.
Nothing happened. The princess, who was wearing a black negligee that showed frail-looking arms as fine and pale as porcelain, went on sleeping. Damon noticed that the nails on her small fingers were lacquered the exact scarlet of her hair.
The two large pillar candles set in tall black stands were giving off an enticing perfume, as well as being clocks — the farther down they burned, the easier to tell time. The lighting was perfect — everything was perfect — except that Jessalyn was still asleep.
Damon coughed again, loudly — and bumped the bed.
The princess woke, starting up and simultaneously bringing two sheathed blades out of her hair.
“Who is it? Is someone there?” She was looking in every direction but the right one.
“It’s only me, your highness.” Damon pitched his voice low, but fraught with unrequited need. “You don’t have to be afraid,” he added, now that she’d at last gotten the right direction and seen him. He knelt by the foot of her bed.
He’d miscalculated a bit. The bed was so large and high that his chest and the knife were far below Jessalyn’s line of sight.
“Here I will take my life,” he announced, very loudly to make sure that Jessalyn was keeping up with the program.
After a moment or two the princess’s head popped up over the foot of the bed.
She balanced herself with hands spread wide and narrow shoulders hunched close to her. At this distance he could see that her eyes were green — a complicated green consisting of many different rings and speckles.
At first she just hissed at him and lifted her knives held in hands whose fingers were tipped with nails of scarlet. Damon bore with her. She would learn in time that all this wasn’t really necessary; that in fact it had gone out of fashion in the real world decades ago and was only kept alive by pulp fiction and old movies.
“Here at your feet I slay myself,” he said again, to make sure she didn’t miss a syllable, or the entire point, for that matter.
“You — yourself?” She was suspicious. “Who are you? How did you get here?
