Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

“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 tête-à-tête 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.”

After which, carefully, he began to pour liquid from the uncorked star ball at one corner of the rectangle. Now that he was actually at the Gate, he realized he had no idea what he should do. The proper procedure might be to jump in and pour out the star ball’s entire liquid in the middle. But four corners seemed to dictate four different places to pour, and he was sticking to that.

He expected Meredith to try to foul things up somehow. Make a run for the house. Make some noise, at least. Attack him from behind now that he had dropped the stave. But apparently her code of honor forbade this.

Strange girl, he thought. But I’ll leave her the stave, since it really belongs to her family, and, anyway, it’s going to get me killed the instant I land in the Dark Dimension. A slave carrying a weapon — especially a weapon like that — won’t have a chance.

Judiciously, he poured out almost all of the liquid left into the final corner and stepped back to see what would happen.

SSSS-bah! White! Blazing white light. That was all his eyes or his mind could take in at first.

And then, with a rush of triumph he thought: I’ve done it! The Gateway is open!

“The center of the upper Dark Dimension, please,” he said politely to the blazing hole. “A secluded alley would probably be the best, if you don’t mind.” And then he jumped into the hole.

Except that he didn’t. Just as he was starting to bend his knees, something hit him from the right. “Meredith! I thought—” But it wasn’t Meredith. It was Bonnie.

“You tricked me! You can’t go in there!” She was sobbing and screaming.

“Yes, I can! Now let go of me — before it disappears!” He tried to pry her off, while his mind whirled uselessly. He’d left this girl — what? — an hour or so ago, so deeply asleep that she had looked dead. Just how much could that little body take?

“No! They’ll kill you! And Elena will kill me! But I’ll get killed first because I’ll still be here!”

Awake, and actually capable of putting together puzzles.

“Human, I told you to let go,” he snarled. He bared his teeth at her, which only caused her to bury her head in his jacket and cling on koala-bear style, wrapping both her legs around one of his.

A couple of really hard slaps should dislodge her, he thought.

He lifted his hand.

Damon dropped his hand. He simply couldn’t make himself do it. Bonnie was weak, light-headed, a liability in combat, easy to confuseThat’s it, he thought. I’ll use that! She’s so naive“ Let go for a second,” he coaxed. “So I can get the stave—”

“No! You’ll jump if I do! What’s a stave?” Bonnie said, all in one breath. — and stubborn, and impracticalWas the brilliant light beginning to flicker?

“Bonnie,” he said in a low voice, “I am deadly serious here. If you don’t let go, I’ll make you — and you won’t like that, I promise.”

“Do what he says,” Meredith pleaded from somewhere quite close. “Bonnie, he’s going into the Dark Dimension! But you’re going to end up going with him — and you’ll both be human slaves this time! Take my hand!”

“Take her hand!” Damon roared, as the light definitely flickered, for an instant becoming less blinding. He could feel Bonnie shifting and trying to see where Meredith was, and then he heard her say, “I can’t—” And then they were falling.

The last time they had traveled through a Gate they had been totally enclosed in an elevator-like box. This time they were simply flying. There was the light, and there were the two of them, and they were so blinded that somehow speaking didn’t seem possible. There was only the brilliant, fluctuating, beautiful lightAnd then they were standing in an alley, so narrow that it just barely allowed the two of them to face each other, and between buildings so high that there was almost no light down where they were.

No — that wasn’t the reason, Damon thought. He remembered that blood-red perpetual light. It wasn’t coming directly from either side of the narrow slit of alley, which meant that they were basically in deep burgundy twilight.

“Do you realize where we are?” Damon demanded in a furious whisper.

Bonnie nodded, seeming happy about having figured that out already. “We’re basically in deep burgundy—”

“Crap!”

Bonnie looked around. “I don’t smell anything,” she offered cautiously, and examined the soles of her feet.

“We are,” Damon said slowly and quietly, as if he needed to calm himself between every word, “in a world where we can be flogged, flayed, and decapitated just for stepping on the ground.”

Bonnie tried a little hop and then a jump in place, as if diminishing her groundinteraction time might help them in some manner. She looked at him for further instructions.

Quite suddenly, Damon picked her up and stared at her hard, as revelation dawned. “You’re drunk!” he finally whispered. “You’re not even awake! All this while I’ve been trying to get you to see sense, and you’re a drunken sleepwalker!”

“I am not!” Bonnie said. “And…just in case I am, you ought to be nicer to me. You made me this way.”

Some distant part of Damon agreed that this was true. He was the one who’d gotten the girl drunk and then drugged her with truth serum and sleeping medicine.

But that was simply a fact, and had nothing to do with how he felt about it. How he felt was that there was no possible way for him to proceed with this all-too-gentle creature along.

Of course, the sensible thing would be to get away from her very quickly, and let the city, this huge metropolis of evil, swallow her in its great, black-fanged maw, as it would most certainly do if she walked a dozen steps on its streets without him.

But, as before, something inside him simply wouldn’t let him do it. And, he realized, the sooner he admitted that, the sooner he could find a place to put her and begin taking care of his own affairs.

“What’s that?” he said, taking one of her hands.

“My opal ring,” Bonnie said proudly. “See, it goes with everything, because it’s all colors. I always wear it; it’s casual or dress-up.” She happily let Damon take it off and examine it.

“These are real diamonds on the sides?”