The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls (12 page)

Meredith sank bank. “Elena Gilbert, the world is lucky there is only one of you. You are the…” She paused, as if deciding whether to say the words or not. Then she said, “It’s time to get to bed. Dawn is going to come early and so is the Demon Gate.”

“Merry?”

“What now?”

“Thank you.”

T
he Demon Gate.

Elena glanced over her shoulder at the backseat of the Prius. Bonnie was blinking sleepily. Meredith, who’d gotten much less sleep but heard much more alarming news, was looking like a razor blade: keen, sharp as ice, and ready.

There was nothing else to see except Damon with his paper bags on the seat beside him, driving the Prius. Out the windows, where an arid Arizona dawn should be blinding its way across the horizon, was nothing but fog.

It was frightening and disorienting. They had taken a small road off Highway 179 and, gradually, the fog had crept in, sending tendrils of mist around the car, and finally engulfing it whole. It seemed to Elena that they were being deliberately cut off from the old ordinary world of McDonald’s and Target, and were crossing a border into a place they weren’t meant to know about, much less go.

There was no traffic in the other direction. None at all. And as hard as Elena peered out of her window, it was like trying to look through fast-moving clouds.

“Aren’t we going too fast?” Bonnie asked, rubbing her eyes.

“No,” Damon said. “It would be—a remarkable coincidence—if anyone else were on the same route at the same time we are.”

“It looks a lot like Arizona,” she said, disappointed.

“It may
be
Arizona, for all I know,” Damon replied. “But we haven’t crossed the Gate yet. And this isn’t anywhere in Arizona you could just accidentally walk into. The path always has its little tricks and traps. The problem is that you never know what you’ll be facing.

“Now listen,” he added, looking at Elena with an expression she had gotten to know. It meant: I’m not joking around; I’m talking to you as an equal; I’m
serious
.

“You’ve gotten very good at showing only a human-sized aura,” Damon said. “But that means that if you can learn one more thing before we go in, you can actually
use
your aura, make it do you some good when you want it to, instead of just hiding it until it pops up out of control and lifts three-thousand-pound cars.”

“Like what kind of good?”

“Like what I’m going to show you. First of all just relax and let me control it. Then, little by little, I’ll slacken the controls and you’ll take them up. By the end, you should be able to send your Powers to your eyes—and see much better; to your ears—and hear much better; to your limbs—and move much more quickly and precisely. All right?”

“You couldn’t have taught me this before we started on this little excursion?”

He smiled at her, a wild, reckless smile that made her smile, too, even if she didn’t know what it was about. “Until you showed how well you could control your aura throughout the path—the way here—I didn’t think you were ready,” he said bluntly. “Now I do. There are things in your mind just waiting to be unlocked. You’ll understand when we unlock them.”

And we unlock them—with what? A kiss? Elena thought suspiciously.

“No. No. And that’s the other reason you’ve got to learn this. Your telepathy is getting out of hand. If you don’t learn how to keep from projecting your thoughts, you’ll never make it past the checkpoint at the Gate as a human.”

Checkpoint. That sounded ominous. Elena nodded and said, “All right; what do we do?”

“What we did before. Like I said, relax. Try to trust me.”

He put his right hand just to the left of her breastbone, not touching the cloth of her deep gold top. Elena could feel herself flushing, and she wondered what Bonnie and Meredith must think of this if they were watching.

And then Elena felt something else.

It wasn’t cold; it wasn’t heat, but it was something like the furthest extremities of both of them. It was pure Power. It would have knocked her over if Damon hadn’t been holding her by the arm with his other hand. She thought, he’s using his own Power to prime mine, to do something—

—something that
hurt
—

No!
Elena tried, vocally and telepathically, to tell Damon that the Power was too much, that it hurt. But Damon ignored her pleas even as he ignored the tears that spilled onto her cheeks. His Power was leading hers now, painfully, throughout her body. It was in her bloodstream, dragging her own Power behind it like a comet’s tail. It was forcing her to take the Power to different parts of her body and let it build and build there, not letting her exhale it, not letting her move it on.

I’m going to burst—

All this time her eyes had been fixed on Damon’s, broadcasting her feelings to him: from indignant anger to shock to agonized pain—and now…to…

Her mind exploded.

The rest of her Power went on circling, without causing any pain. Each new breath she drew added more Power to it, but it simply circulated through her bloodstream, not increasing her aura, but increasing the Power that was inside her. After two or three more quick breaths she realized that she was doing it effortlessly.

Now Elena’s Power wasn’t simply sliding around smoothly inside her, looking from the outside like any other human’s. It was also filling several burst swollen nodes inside her and where it did that, it changed things.

She realized that she was looking at Damon with round eyes. He might have told her about how this would feel, rather than letting her go into it blind.

You really are a total bastard, aren’t you?
Elena thought, and, amazingly, she could feel Damon receive the thought, and could feel his automatic response, which was pleased agreement, rather than otherwise.

Then Elena forgot about him in the dawning of a new understanding. She was realizing that she could keep circulating her Power inside her, and even build it higher and higher, getting ready for a truly explosive burst, and show
nothing
of what it was doing on the surface.

And as for the nodes…

Elena looked around her at what a few minutes ago had been barren wilderness. It was like taking bullets of light through both her eyes. She was dazzled; she was enthralled. Colors seemed to come to life in a painful glory. She felt that she could see much farther than she ever had, on and on into the desert, and at the same time, she could distinguish Damon’s pupils from his irises.

Why, they’re both black, but different shades of black, she thought. Of course, they go together—Damon would never have irises that didn’t complement his pupils. But the irises are more velvety, where his pupils are more silky and shiny. And yet it’s a velvet that can hold light inside it—almost like the night sky with stars—like those kitsune star balls that Meredith told me about.

Right now those pupils were wide and set unyieldingly on her face, as if Damon didn’t want to miss a moment of her reaction. Suddenly, the corner of his lip quirked in a faint smile.

“You did it. You learned to channel your Power to your eyes.” He spoke in a bare whisper that she could never have detected before.

“And to my ears,” she whispered back, listening to the amazing symphony of tiny sounds around her. High in the air, a bat squeaked on a frequency too high for any ordinary human ear to notice. As for the fall of grains of sand around her, they formed something like a tiny concerto as they struck rock and bounced with a tiny ping before falling to the ground below.

This is amazing
, she told Damon, hearing the smugness in her own telepathic voice.
And I can talk to you this way any time now?
She would have to watch out for that—telepathy threatened to reveal more than she might want to send to a recipient.

It’s best to be careful,
Damon agreed, confirming her suspicions. She’d sent more than she’d meant to.

But Damon—can Bonnie do this, too? Should I try to show her?

“Who knows?” Damon replied aloud, making Elena wince. “Teaching humans how to use Power isn’t exactly my forte.”

And what about my different Wings Powers? Will I be able to control them, now?

“About those I have absolutely no idea. I’ve never seen anything like them.” Damon looked thoughtful for a moment and then shook his head. “I think you’d need someone with more experience than I have to learn to control those.” Before Elena could say anything else, he added, “We’d better get back to the others. We’re almost at the Gate.”

“And I suppose I shouldn’t be using telepathy then.”

“Well, it is a rather obvious giveaway—”

“But you’ll teach me later, won’t you? As much as you know about controlling Power?”

“Maybe your boyfriend should be doing that,” Damon said almost roughly.

He’s afraid, Elena thought, trying to keep her thoughts hidden under a wall of white noise so that Damon wouldn’t pick them up. He’s just as afraid that he’ll reveal too much to me as I am afraid of him.

“A
ll right,” Damon said as he and Elena reached Bonnie and Meredith. “Now comes the hard part.”

Meredith looked up at him. “
Now
comes…?”

“Yes. The really hard part.” Damon had finally unzipped his mysterious black leather bag. “Look,” he said in a bare murmur, “this is the actual Gate that we have to get through. And while we’re doing it, you can have all the hysterics you want because you’re supposed to be captives.” He pulled out a number of pieces of rope.

Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie had drawn together in an automatic show of velociraptor sisterhood.

“What,” Meredith said slowly, as if to give Damon the final benefit of some lingering doubt, “are those ropes for?”

Damon put his head to one side in an oh-come-on gesture. “They’re for tying your hands.”

“For
what
?”

Elena was amazed. She had never seen Meredith so obviously angry. She herself couldn’t even get a word in. Meredith had walked up and was looking at Damon from a distance of about four inches.

And her eyes are
gray
! some distant part of Elena’s mind exclaimed in astonishment. Deep, deep, deep, clear gray gray. All this time I’ve thought they were brown, but they’re not.

Meanwhile Damon was looking faintly alarmed at Meredith’s expression. A T. rex would have looked alarmed at Meredith’s expression, Elena thought.

“And you expect us to walk around with our hands tied up? While
you
do what?”

“While I act as your master,” Damon said, suddenly rallying with a glorious smile that was gone almost before it was there. “The three of you are my slaves.”

There was a long,
long
silence.

Elena waved the entire pile of objects away with a gesture. “We won’t do that,” she said simply. “We won’t. There has to be some other way—”

“Do you want to rescue Stefan or not?”
Damon demanded suddenly. There was a searing heat in the dark eyes he had fixed on Elena.

“Of course I do!” Elena flashed back, feeling heat in her cheeks. “But not as a slave, dragged along behind you!”

“That’s the only way humans get into the Dark Dimension,” Damon said flatly. “Tied or chained, as a vampire’s or kitsune’s or demon’s property.”

Meredith was shaking her head. “You never told us—”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like the way in!”

Even while answering Meredith, Damon’s eyes never left Elena. Underneath his outward coldness, he seemed to be pleading with her to understand, she thought. In the old days, she thought, he’d have just lounged against a wall and raised his eyebrows and said, “Fine; I didn’t want to go anyway. Who’s for a picnic?”

But Damon did want them to go, Elena realized. He was desperate for them to go. He just didn’t know any honest way of conveying that. The only way he knew was to—

“You have to make us a promise, Damon,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes. “And it has to be before we make the decision to go or not.”

She could see the relief in his eyes, even if to the other girls it might seem as if his face was perfectly cold and impassive. She knew he was glad she wasn’t saying that her previous decision was final, and that was that. “What promise?” Damon asked.

“You have to swear—to give your word—that no matter what we decide now or in the Dark Dimension, you won’t try to Influence us. You won’t put us to sleep by mind control, or nudge us to do what you want. You won’t use
any
vampire tricks on our minds.”

Damon wouldn’t be Damon if he didn’t argue. “But, look, suppose the time comes when you want me to do that? There are some things there that it might be better for you to sleep through—”

“Then we’ll tell you we’ve changed our minds, and we’ll release you from the promise. You see? There’s no downside. You just have to swear.”

“All right,” Damon said, still holding her gaze. “I swear I won’t use any kind of Power on your minds; I won’t Influence you in any way, until you ask me to. I give my word.”

“Right.” At last Elena broke the stare down with the tiniest of smiles and nods. And Damon gave her an almost imperceptible nod in return.

She turned away to find herself looking into Bonnie’s searching brown gaze.

“Elena,” Bonnie whispered, tugging on her arm. “Come here for a sec, okay?” Elena could hardly help it. Bonnie was strong as a small Welsh pony. Elena went, casting a powerless look over her shoulder at Damon as she did.

“What?” she whispered when Bonnie finally stopped dragging her. Meredith had come along as well, figuring it might be sisterhood business. “Well?”

“Elena,” Bonnie burst out, as if unable to hold the words back any longer, “the way you and Damon act—it’s different than it used to be. You didn’t used to…I mean, what
really
happened between you two when you were alone together?”

“This is hardly the time for that,” Elena hissed. “We’re having a big problem here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“But—what if—”

Meredith took up the unfinished sentence, pushing a dark lock of hair out of her eyes. “What if it’s something Stefan doesn’t like? Like ‘what happened with Damon when you were alone in the motel that night’?” she finished, quoting Bonnie’s words.

Bonnie’s mouth fell open. “What motel? What night?
What happened?
” she almost shrieked, causing Meredith to try to quiet her and get bitten for her pains.

Elena looked at first one and then the other of her two friends—the two friends who had come to die with her if necessary. She could feel her breath come short. It was so unfair, but…“Can we just discuss this later?” she suggested, trying to convey with her eyes and eyebrows
Damon can hear us!

Bonnie merely whispered, “What motel? What night? What—”

Elena gave up. “
Nothing
happened,” she said flatly. “Meredith is only quoting
you
, Bonnie. You said those words last night while you were asleep. And maybe sometime in the future you’ll tell us what you’re talking about, because
I don’t know
.”

She finished by looking at Meredith, who just raised one perfect eyebrow. “You’re right,” Meredith said, completely undeceived. “The English language could use a word like ‘sa.’ It would make these conversations so much shorter, for one thing.”

Bonnie sighed. “Well, then, I’ll find out for myself,” she said. “You may not think I can, but I
will
.”

“Okay, okay, but meanwhile does anyone have anything helpful to say about Damon’s rope stuff?”

“Such as, do we tell him where to stuff it?” Meredith suggested under her breath.

Bonnie was holding a length of rope. She ran a small, fair-skinned hand over it.

“I don’t think this was bought in anger,” she said, her brown eyes unfocusing and her voice taking on the slightly eerie tone it always did when she was in trance. “I see a boy and a girl, over a counter at a hardware store—and she’s laughing, and the boy says, ‘I’ll bet you anything that you’re going to school next year to be an architect,’ and the girl gets all misty-eyed, and says, yes, and—”

“And that’s all the psychic spying I care to hear today.” Damon had come right up to them without making a sound. Bonnie jumped violently, and almost dropped the rope.

“Listen,” Damon continued harshly, “just a hundred meters away is the final crossing. Either you wear these and you
act
like slaves or you don’t get in to help Stefan. Ever. That’s
it.
”

Silently, the girls conferred with their eyes. Elena knew that her own expression said clearly that she wasn’t asking either Bonnie or Meredith to go with her, but that she herself was going if it required crawling behind Damon on her hands and knees.

Meredith, looking directly into Elena’s eyes, slowly shut her own and nodded, letting out her breath. Bonnie was nodding her head already, resigned.

In silence, Bonnie and Meredith let Elena tie their wrists in front of them. Elena then let Damon tie her wrists and thread a long rope between the three of them, as if they were a chain gang of prisoners.

Elena could feel a flush coming up from below her chest to burn in her cheeks. She couldn’t meet Damon’s eyes, not this way, but she knew without asking that Damon was thinking about the time that Stefan had dismissed him from his apartment like a dog, in front of just this audience, plus Matt.

Vengeful
cad, Elena thought as hard as she could in Damon’s direction. She knew the last word would hurt the most. Damon prided himself on being a gentleman…

But “gentlemen” don’t go into the Dark Dimension
, Damon’s voice in her head said mockingly.

“All right,” Damon added aloud, and took the lead rope in one hand. He started walking briskly into the darkness of the cave, the three girls crowding and stumbling behind him.

Elena would never forget that brief journey, and she knew neither Bonnie nor Meredith would either. They walked across the shallow opening of the cave and into the small opening in the back, which gaped like a mouth. It took some maneuvering to get the three of them into it. On the other side the cavern flared out again, and they were in a large cavern. At least that was what Elena’s enhanced senses told her. The everlasting fog had returned and Elena had no idea which way they were going.

Only a few minutes later a building reared up out of the thick fog.

Elena didn’t know what she had been expecting from the Demon Gate. Possibly huge ebony doors, carved with serpents and encrusted with jewels. Maybe a rough-hewn, weathered colossus of stone, like the Egyptian pyramids. Perhaps even some sort of futuristic energy field that flickered and flashed with blue-violet lasers.

What she saw instead looked like a ramshackle depot of some kind, a place for holding and shipping goods. There was an empty pen, heavily fenced, topped with barbed wire. It stank, and Elena was glad that she and Damon had not channeled power to her nose.

Then there were people, men and women in fine clothes, each with a key in one hand, murmuring something before opening a door in one side of the building. The same door—but Elena would bet anything that they weren’t all going to the same place, if the keys were like the one she had briefly “borrowed” from Shinichi’s house a week or so ago. One of the ladies looked as if she were dressed for a fancy masquerade, with fox ears that blended into her long auburn hair. It was only when Elena saw under her ankle-length dress the swishing of a fox tail that she realized that the woman was a kitsune making use of the Demon Gate.

Damon hastily—and none too gently—led them to the other side of the building, where a broken-hinged door opened into a dilapidated room that, strangely, seemed larger on the inside than on the outside. All sorts of things were being bartered or sold here: many looked as if they had to do with the management of slaves.

Elena, Meredith, and Bonnie looked at one another, round-eyed. Obviously, people bringing wild slaves in from the outside considered torture and terror all in a day’s work.

“Passage for four,” Damon said briefly to the slump-shouldered but heavyset man behind the counter.

“Three savages all at once?” The man, eyes devouring what he could see of the three girls, turned to look at Damon suspiciously.

“What can I say? My job is also my hobby.” Damon stared him straight in the eyes.

“Yeh, but…” The man laughed. “Lately we bin gettin’ maybe one or two a month.”

“They’re legally mine. No kidnappings. Kneel,” Damon added casually to the three girls.

It was Meredith who got it first and sank to the ground like a ballet dancer. Her dark, dark gray eyes were focused on something no one but she could see. Then Elena somehow untangled the single syllable from the others. She focused her mind on Stefan and pretended she was kneeling to kiss him on his prison pallet. It seemed to work; she was down.

But Bonnie was up. The most dependent, the softest, the most innocent member of the triumvirate found that her knees had gone solid.

“Redheads, eh?” the man said, eyeing Damon sharply even as he smirked. “Maybe you’d better buy a little tingler for that one.”

“Maybe,” Damon said tightly. Bonnie just looked at him blankly, looked at the girls on the ground and then threw herself into a prostrate position. Elena could hear her sobbing softly. “But I’ve found that a firm voice and a disapproving look actually work better.”

The man gave up and slumped again. “Passage for four,” he grunted and reached up and pulled on a dirty bell rope. By this time Bonnie was weeping in fear and humiliation, but no one seemed to notice, except the other girls.

Elena didn’t dare to try to comfort her telepathically; that wouldn’t fit in with the aura of a “normal human girl” at all, and who knew what traps or devices might be hidden here in addition to the man who kept undressing them over and over with his eyes? She just wished she could call up one of her Wings attacks, right here in this room. That would wipe the smug look off the man’s face.

A moment later, something else wiped it off as completely as she could have desired. Damon leaned across the counter and whispered something to him that turned the slumped man’s leering face a sickly color of green.

Did you hear what he said?
Elena communicated this to Meredith using her eyes and eyebrows.

Meredith, her own eyes crinkling, positioned her hand in front of Elena’s abdomen, then made a twisting, ripping motion.

Even Bonnie smiled.

Then Damon led them to wait outside the depot. They had only been standing a few minutes when Elena’s new vision spotted a boat gliding silently through the mist. She realized that the building must be on the very bank of a river, but even with Power directed solely to her eyes she could barely make out where the nonreflective land gave way to shining water, and even with Power directed solely to her ears she could barely hear the sound of swift deep water running.