Elena clutched the child to her. Damon had understood, even in his dazed and confused state. Everyone was connected. No one was alone.
“And he asked something else. He asked if you would hold me, just like this—if I got sleepy.” Velvety dark eyes searched Elena’s face. “Would you do that?”
Elena tried to keep steady. “I’ll hold you,” she promised.
“And you won’t let go ever?”
“And I won’t let goever,” Elena told him, because he was a child, and there was no point in frightening him if he had no fear. And because maybe this part of Damon—this small, innocent part—would have some kind of “forever.” She had heard that vampires didn’t come back, didn’t reincarnate the way humans did. The vampires in the top Dark Dimension were still “alive”—adventurers or fortune-seekers, or condemned there as a prison by the Celestial Court.
“I’ll hold you,” Elena promised again. “Forever and ever.”
Just then his small body went into another spasm, and she saw tears on his dark eyelashes, and blood on his lip. But before she could say a word, he added, “I have more messages. I know them by heart. But”—his eyes begged her forgiveness—“I have to give them to the others.”
What others? Elena thought at first, bewildered. Then she remembered. Stefan and Bonnie. There were other loved ones.
“I can…tell them for you,” she said hesitantly, and he gave a tiny smile, his first, just the corner of one lip up.
“He left me a little telepathy, too,” he said. “I kept it in case I had to call to you.”
Still fiercely independent, Elena thought. All she said was, “You go ahead, then.”
“The first one is for my brother, Stefan.”
“You can tell him in just a moment,” Elena said. She held on to the small boy in Damon’s soul, knowing that this was the last thing she had left to give him. She could sacrifice a few priceless seconds, so that Stefan and Bonnie could say their own good-byes. She made some sort of enormous adjustment to her real body—her body outside Damon’s mind, and found herself opening her eyes, blinking and trying to focus.
She saw Stefan’s face, white and stricken. “Is he—?”
“No. But soon. He can hear telepathy, if you think clearly, as if you were speaking. He asked to talk to you.”
“To me?” Stefan bent down slowly and put his cheek against his brother’s. Elena shut her eyes again, guiding him down through the darkness to where one small light was still shining. She felt Stefan’s wonder as he saw her there, still holding the little dark-haired boy in her arms.
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Elena hadn’t realized that through her link to the child, she would be able to hear every word spoken. Or that Damon’s messages would come in the words of a child.
The little boy said, “I guess you think I’m pretty stupid.”
Stefan started. He’d never seen or heard the child-Damon before. “I could never think that,” he said slowly, marveling.
“But it wasn’t much like…him, you know. Like… me.”
“I think,” Stefan said unsteadily, “that it’s terribly sad—that I never really knew either of you very well.”
“Please don’t be sad. That’s what he told me to say. That you shouldn’t be sad…or afraid. He said it’s a little bit like going to sleep, and a little bit like flying.”
“I’ll…remember that. And—thank you—big brother.”
“I think that’s all. You know to watch over our girls….” There was another of the terrible spasms that left the child breathless. Stefan spoke quickly.
“Of course. I’ll take care of everything. You fly.”
Elena could feel the grief slash at Stefan’s heart, but his voice was calm. “Fly away now, my brother. Fly away.”
Elena felt something through the link—Bonnie touching Stefan’s shoulder. He quickly got up so that she could lie down. Bonnie was almost hysterical with sobbing, but she had done a good thing, Elena saw. While Elena had been in her own little world with Damon, Bonnie had taken a dagger and cut off a long lock of Elena’s hair. Then she had cut one of her own strawberry curls, and placed the locks—one wavy and golden, one curling and red-blond—on Damon’s chest. It was all they could do on this flowerless world to honor him, to be with him forever.
Elena could hear Bonnie, too, through her link with Damon, but at first all Bonnie could do was sob, “Damon, please! Oh, please! I didn’t know—I never thought—that anyone would get hurt! You saved my life! And now—oh, please! I can’t say good-bye!”
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She didn’t understand, Elena thought, that she was talking to a very young child. But Damon had sent the child a message to repeat.
“I’msupposed to tell you good-bye, though.” For the first time the child looked uneasy. “And—and I’m supposed to tell you ‘I’m sorry,’ too. He thought you’d know what that meant and you’d forgive me. But…if you don’t…I don’t know what will happen—oh!”
Another of the hateful spasms went through the child. Elena held on to him hard, biting her own lip until the blood came; at the same time trying to shield the little boy completely from her own feelings. And deep in Damon’s mind, she saw Bonnie’s expression change, from tearful penance to astonished fear to careful control. As if Bonnie had grown up all in an instant.
“Of course—of course I understand! And I forgive you—butyou haven’t done anything wrong. I’m such a silly girl—I…”
“We don’t think you’re a silly girl,” the child said, looking vastly relieved. “But thank you for forgiving me. There’s a special name I’m supposed to call you, too—but I…” He sank back against Elena. “I guess—I’m…getting sleepy…”
“Was it ‘redbird’?” Bonnie asked carefully, and the little boy’s pale face lit up.
“That was it. You knew already. You’re all…so nice and so smart. Thank you…for making it easy…But can I say one more thing?”
Elena was about to answer, when abruptly she was jarred completely out of Damon’s mind and back into reality. The Tree had slammed down another spider’s leg set of branches, trapping them and Damon’s body between two circles of wooden bars.
Elena had no plans. No idea how to get to the star ball that Damon had died for. Either the Tree was intelligent, or it was wired to have such efficient defenses that it might as well have been. They were lying on the evidence that many, many people had tried for that star ball—and left behind their bones ground to sand.
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Come to that, she thought, I wonder why it hasn’t gone for us, too—especially for Bonnie. She’s been in, and then out, and back in again, which I should never have let her do except that we were all thinking about Damon. Why didn’t it go for her again?
Stefan was trying to be strong, trying to organize something out of this disaster that was so stunning that Elena herself simply sat. Bonnie was sobbing again, making heart-wrenching sounds.
Between both circular sets of bars a wooden network was spreading—too close-knit for even Bonnie to squeeze through. Elena’s group was efficiently separated from anything outside the sand pit, and just as efficiently separated from the star ball.
“The axe!” Stefan called to her. “Throw me—”
But there was no time. A rootlet had curled around it and was swiftly dragging it into the upper branches.
“Stefan, I’m sorry! I was too slow!”
“It was too fast!” Stefan corrected.
Elena held her breath, waiting for the last crash from above, the one that would kill them all. When it didn’t come, she realized something. The Tree was not only intelligent, but sadistic. They were to be trapped here, away from their supplies, to die slowly of thirst and starvation, or to go mad watching the others die.
The best that they could hope for was that Stefan would kill both Bonnie and her—but even he would never get out. These wooden branches would come crashing down again and again, as often as the Tree felt necessary, until Stefan’s crushed bones joined the others that had been milled to fine sand.
That was what did it, the thought of all of them, trapped with Damon, making a mockery of his death. Thething that had been swelling inside Elena for weeks now, at hearing the stories about children who ate their pets, at creatures who delighted in pain, had, with Damon’s sacrifice, finally gotten so big that she could no longer contain it.
“Stefan, Bonnie—don’t touch the branches,” she gasped. “Make sure you’re not touching any part of the branches.”
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“I’m not, love, and Bonnie isn’t either. But why?”
“I can’t keep it in anymore! I have to stand like this—”
“Elena, no! That spell—”
Elena could no longer think. The hateful demi-light was driving her mad, reminding her of the pinpoint of green in Damon’s pupils, the horrible green light of the Tree.
She understood exactly about the Tree’s sadism to her friends…and in the corner of her eye she could see a bit of black…like a rag doll. Except that it was no doll; it was Damon. Damon with all of his wild and witty spirit broken. Damon…who must be gone from this and all worlds by now.
His face was covered with her blood. There was nothing peaceful or dignified about him. There was nothing the Tree had not taken from him.
Elena lost her mind.
With a scream that peeled raw and bleeding from her backbone and came hoarsely out of her throat, Elena grabbed a branch of the Tree that had killed Damon, that had murdered her beloved, and that would murder her and these two others she loved as well.
She had no thoughts. She wasn’t capable of thinking. But instinctively she held a high bough of the Tree’s cage and let the fury explode out of her, the fury of murdered love.
Wings of Destruction.
She felt the Wings arch behind her, like ebony lace and black pearls, and for a moment she felt like a deadly goddess, knowing that this planet would never harbor any life ever again.
When the attack flared out, it turned the twilight all around her to matte black. What a fitting color. Damon will like this, she thought in confusion, and then she remembered again, and it slammed blistering out of her again, the Power to destroy the Tree all over this small world. It shattered her from the inside but she let it keep coming. No physical pain could compare with what was in her heart, with the pain of losing what she had lost. No physical pain could express how she felt.
The huge roots in the ground underneath them were bucking as if there was an earthquake, and then—
There was a deafening sound as the trunk of the Great Tree exploded straight upward like a rocket, disintegrating to fine ash as it went. The spider’s-leg bars around them simply disappeared along with the canopy above. Something in Elena’s mind noted that very far away the same destruction was going on, racing to turn branches and leaves into infinitesimal bits of matter that hung in the air like haze.
“The star ball!” Bonnie cried in the eerie silence, anguished.
“Vaporized!” Stefan caught Elena as she sank to her knees, her ethereal black wings fading. “But we’d never have gotten it anyway. That Tree had been protecting it for thousands of years! All we’d have gotten would have been a slow death.”
Elena had turned back to Damon. She had not been touching the stake that ran through him—in seconds it would be the only remnant of the Tree on this world. She could hardly dare hope that there was a spark of life left in him now, but the child had wanted to speak with her and she would make that possible or die trying. She scarcely felt Stefan’s arms around her.
Once again, she plunged into the very depths of Damon’s mind. This time she knew exactly where to go.
And there, by a miracle, he was, although obviously in hideous pain. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and he was trying not to sob. His lips were bitten raw. Her Wings had not been able to destroy the wood inside him—it had already done its poisonous damage—and there was no way to reverse that.
“Oh, no, oh God!” Elena caught the child in her arms. A teardrop fell on her hand. She rocked him, scarcely knowing what she was saying. “What can I do to help?”
“You’re here again,” he said, and in his voice, she heard the answer. This was all that he wanted. He was a very simple child.
“I’ll be here—always. Always. I’m never letting go.”
This didn’t have the effect that she wanted. The boy gasped, trying to smile, but was torn with a horrible spasm that almost arched his body out of her arms.
And Elena realized that she was turning the inevitable into slow, excruciating torture.
“I’ll hold you,” she modified her words for him, “until you want me to let go. All right?”
He nodded. His very voice was breathless with pain. “Could you—could you let me shut my eyes? Just…just for a moment?”
Elena knew, as perhaps this child did not, what would happen if she stopped badgering him and let him sleep. But she couldn’t stand to see him suffering any longer, and nothing was real again, and there was no one else in the world for her, and she didn’t even care if doing it this way meant she would follow him into death.
Carefully steadying her voice, she said, “Maybe…we can both shut our eyes. Not for a long time—no! But…just for a moment.”
She kept rocking the small body in her arms. She could still feel a faint pulse of life…not a heartbeat, but still, a pulsing. She knew that he hadn’t shut his eyes yet; that he was still fighting the torture.
For her. Not for anything else. For her sake only.
Putting her lips close to his ear, she whispered, “Let’s close our eyes together, all right? Let’s close them…at the count of three. Is that all right?”
There was such relief in his voice and such love. “Yes. Together. I’m ready. You can count now.”
“One.” Nothing mattered except holding him and keeping herself steady. “Two. And…”
“Elena?”
She was startled. Had the child ever said her name before?
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Elena…I…love you. Not just because of him.I love you too.”
Elena had to hide her face in his hair. “I love you, too, little one. You’ve always known that, haven’t you?”
“Yes—always.”
“Yes. You’ve always known that. And now…we’ll close our eyes—for a moment.Three.”
She waited until the last faint movement stopped, and his head fell back, and his eyes were shut and the shadow of suffering was gone. He looked, not peaceful, but simply gentle—and kind, and Elena could see in his face what an adult with Damon’s features and that expression would look like.
But now even the small body was evaporating right out of Elena’s arms. Oh, she was stupid. She’d forgotten to close her eyes with him. She was so dizzy, even though Stefan had stopped the bleeding from her neck. Closing her eyes…maybe she would look as he had. Elena was so glad that he’d gone gently at the end.
Maybe the darkness would be kind to her, too.
Everything was quiet now. Time to put away her toys and draw the curtains. Time now to get in bed. One last embrace…and now her arms were empty.
Nothing left to do, nothing left to fight. She’d done her best. And, at least, the child had not been frightened.
Time to turn off the light now. Time to shut her own eyes.
The darkness was very kind to her, and she went into it gently.
40
But after an endless time in the soft, kind darkness, something was forcing Elena back up into light. Real light. Not the terrible green half-light of the Tree. Even through shut eyelids she could see it, feel its heat. A yellow sun. Where was she? She couldn’t remember.
And she didn’t care. Something was saying inside her that the gentle darkness was better. But then she remembered a name.
Stefan.
Stefan was…?
Stefan was the one who…the one she loved. But he’d never understood that love was not singular. He’d never understood that she could be in love with Damon and that it would never change an atom’s worth of her love for him. Or that his lack of understanding had been so wrenching and painful that she had felt torn into two different people at times.
But now, even before she opened her eyes, she realized that she was drinking. She was drinking the blood of a vampire, and that vampire wasn’t Stefan. There was something unique in this blood. It was deeper and spicier and more heavy, all at once.
She couldn’t help opening her eyes. For some reason she didn’t understand, theyflew open and she tried immediately to focus on the scent and feeling and color of whoever was bending over her, holding her.
She couldn’t understand, either, her sense of letdown when she slowly realized that it was Sage leaning over her, holding her gently but securely to his neck, with his bronze chest bare and warm from the sunlight.
But she was lying down flat, on grass, from what her hands could feel…and for some reason her head was cold. Very cold.
Cold and wet.
She stopped drinking and tried to sit up. The light grip became firmer. She heard Sage’s voice say, and felt the rumbling in his chest as he said it, “Ma pauvre petite, you must drink more in a moment or so. And your hair has still some of the ashes in it.”
Ashes?Ashes? Didn’t you put ashes on your head for…now what had she been thinking about? It was as if there was a block in her mind, keeping her from getting close to…something. But she wasn’t going to be told what to do.
Elena sat up.
She was in—yes, she was very sure—the kitsune paradise, and until a moment ago her body had been arched back, so that her hair had been in the clear little stream that she had seen earlier. Stefan and Bonnie had been washing something pitch-black out of her hair. They both were smudged with black as well: Stefan had a big swath across one cheekbone, and Bonnie had faint gray streaks below her eyes.
Crying. Bonnie had been crying. She was still crying, in little sobs that she was trying to suppress. And now that Elena looked harder she could see that Stefan’s eyelids were swollen and that he had been crying too.
Elena’s lips were numb. She fell back onto the grass, looking up at Sage, who was wiping his eyes furtively. Her throat ached, not just inside, where sobbing and gasping might make it hurt, but outside, too. She had a picture of herself slashing at her own neck with a knife.
Through her numb lips, she whispered, “Am I a vampire?”
“Pas encore,” Sage said unsteadily. “Not yet. But Stefan and I, we both had to give you massive amounts of blood. You must be very careful in the next days. You are right on the brink.”
That explained how she felt. Probably Damon was hoping that she would become one, wicked boy. Instinctively, she held out her hand to Stefan. Maybe she could help him.
“We just won’t do anything for a little while,” she said. “You don’t have to be sad.” But she herself still felt very wrong. She hadn’t felt this wrong since she’d seen Stefan in prison and had thought that he would die at any moment.
No…it was worse…because with Stefan there had been hope and Elena had the feeling that now hope was gone. Everything was gone. She was hollow: a girl who looked solid, but whose insides were missing.
“I’m dying,” she whispered. “I know it…Are you all going to say good-bye now?”
And with that Sage—Sage!—choked up and began to sob. Stefan, still looking so oddly mussed, with those traces of soot on his face and arms and his hair and clothes soaking wet, said, “Elena, you’re not going to die. Not unless you choose to.”
She had never seen Stefan look like this before. Not even in prison. His flame, his inner fire that he showed to almost no one but Elena, had gone out.
“Sage saved us,” he said, slowly carefully, as if it cost him great effort to speak. “The ash that was falling—you and Bonniewould have died if you’d had to breathe any more of it. But Sage put a door back to the Gatehouse right in front of us. I could barely see it; my eyes were so full of ashfall, and it’s only getting worse on that moon.”
“Ashfall,” Elena whispered. There was something at the bottom of her mind, but once again her memory failed her. It was almost as if she’d been Influenced to not remember. But that was ridiculous.
“Why were ashes falling?” she asked, realizing that her voice was husky, hoarse—as if she’d cheered too long at a football game.
“You usedWings of Destruction,” Stefan said steadily, looking at her with his swollen eyes. “You saved our lives. But you killed the Tree—and the star ball disintegrated.”
Wings of Destruction. She must have lost her temper. And she’d killed a world. She was a murderer.
And now the star ball was lost. Fell’s Church. Oh, God. What would Damon say to her? Elena had done everything—everything wrong. Bonnie was sobbing now, her face turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Elena said, knowing how inadequate this was. For the first time she looked around miserably. “Damon?” she whispered. “He won’t speak to me? Because of what I did?”
Sage and Stefan looked at each other.
Ice went down Elena’s spine.
She started to get up, but her legs weren’t the legs she remembered. They wanted to unlock at the knees. She was staring down at herself, at her own wet and smudged clothes—and then something like mud came down her forehead. Mud or congealing blood.
Bonnie made a sound. She was still sobbing, but she was speaking, too, in a new husky voice that made her sound much older. “Elena—we didn’t get the ashes out of the top of your hair. Sage had to give you an emergency transfusion.”
“I’ll get the ashes out,” Elena said flatly. She let her knees bend. She fell onto them, jarring her body. Then, twisting, she leaned down to the little brook and let her head fall forward. Through the icy shock she could dimly hear exclamations from the people above water, and Stefan’s sharp,Elena, are you all right? in her head.
No, she thought back. But I’m not drowning, either. I’m washing out my hair. Maybe Damon will at least see me if I’m presentable. Maybe he’ll come with us and fight for Fell’s Church.
Let me help you up, Stefan sent quietly.
Elena had come to the end of her air. She pulled her heavy head out of the water and flipped it, soaking but clean, so that it fell down her back. She stared at Stefan.
“Why?” she said—and then, with a sudden panic—“Has he left already? Was he angry…with me?”
“Stefan.” It was Sage, speaking tiredly. Stefan, who was staring out of his green eyes like a hunted animal, made some faint sound.
“The Influence, it is not working,” Sage said. “Shewill remember on her own.”
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