Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Elena woke up feeling stiff and cramped. But that wasn’t surprising. Three other people seemed to be on top of her.

Elena? Can you hear me?

Stefan?

Yes! You’re awake?

I’m all cramped…and hot.

A different voice interrupted. Just give us a moment and you won’t be cramped anymore. Elena felt Damon move away. Bonnie rolled into his place.

But Stefan clung to her for a moment. Elena, I’m sorry. I never even realized what condition you were in. Thank God for Damon. Can you forgive me?

Despite the heat, Elena cuddled closer to him. If you can forgive me for putting the whole party in danger. I did that, didn’t I?

I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that I love you.

It was several minutes before Bonnie woke up. Then she said feebly, “Hey!

Whachoo doin’ in my bed?”

“Getting out of it,” Elena said, and tried to roll over and get up. The world was wobbly. She was wobbly — and bruised. But Stefan was never more than a few inches away, holding her, righting her when she started to fall. He helped her get dressed without making her feel like a baby. He examined her backpack, which fortunately hadn’t gone into the water, and then he took out anything heavy inside.

He put the heavy things in his own pack.

Elena felt much better after being given some food, and after seeing the thurgsboth of them — eating too; either stretching their great double trunks up to break off pieces of wood from the barren trees, or scooping away snow to find dry grass underneath. They clearly were not going to die after all.

Elena knew everyone was watching her to gauge whether or not she was up to any more that day. She hurried to finish drinking the tea heated over a dung fire, trying to conceal the fact that her hands shook. After forcing some jerky down, she said in her most cheerful voice, “So what next?”

How do you feel? Stefan asked her.

“Little sore, but I’ll be fine. I guess everyone expects me to have pneumonia, but I don’t even have any cough.”

Damon, after one heavy-lidded glance at Stefan, took both her hands and stared at her. She couldn’t — she didn’t dare — meet his eyes, so she focused on Stefan, who was looking at her comfortingly.

At last Damon dropped Elena’s hands abruptly. “I went in as far as I could. You should know how far that is,” he added to Stefan. “She’s sound, her nose is wet, and her coat is shiny.”

Stefan looked as if he were going to smack him one, but Elena took his hand soothingly. “I’m healthy,” she said. “So that’s two votes for me going on to save Fell’s Church.”

“I’ve always believed in you,” Stefan said. “If you think you can go on, you can go on.”

Bonnie sniffled. “Just don’t take any more chances, okay?” she said. “You scared me.”

“I’m really sorry,” Elena said gently, feeling the void of Meredith’s absence.

Meredith would be a great help to both of them now. “So, shall we continue? And where are we heading? I’m all turned around.”

Damon stood. “I think we just keep in a straight line. The path is narrow after this — and who knows what the next trial is?”

The path was narrow — and misty. Just as before, it started in filmy veils and ended up blinding them. Elena let Stefan, with his catlike reflexes, go first, and she held on to his pack. Behind her, Bonnie clung like a burr. Just when Elena thought she was going to scream if she had to keep traveling through the white blanket any farther, it cleared.

They were near the top of some mountain.

Elena took off after Bonnie, who had hurried ahead at the sight of transparent air. She was just fast enough to grab on to Bonnie’s pack and pull her backward as she reached the place where the land stopped.

“No way!” Bonnie cried, setting up a clamoring echo from below. “There is no way I’m going across that!”

That was a chasm with a very thin bridge spanning it.

The chasm was frosty white on either side at the top, but when Elena gripped the bridge’s ice-cold metal poles and leaned a little forward she could see glacial blues and greens at the very bottom. A chill wind hit her face.

The gap between this bit of the world and the next bit directly in front of them was about a hundred yards long.

Elena looked from the shadowy depths to the slender bridge, which was made of wooden slats and just wide enough for one person to walk on. It was supported here and there by ropes which ran to the sides of the chasm and were sunk with metal posts into barren, icy rock.

It also swooped magnificently down and then back up again. Even looking at it gave the eye a sort of mini-thrill ride. The only problem was that it didn’t include a safety belt, a seat, two handrails, and a uniformed guide saying, “Hands and feet must be kept inside the attraction at all times!” It did have a single, thin, creeperwoven rope to hold on to on the left.

“Look,” Stefan was saying, as quietly and intently as Elena had ever heard him speak, “we can hold onto each other. We can go go one by one, very slowly—”

“NOOO!” Bonnie put into that one word a psychic shriek that almost defeaned Elena. “No, no, no, no, NO! You don’t understand! I can’t DO IT!” She flung her backpack down.

Then she began laughing and crying at the same time in a full-blown attack of hysterics. Elena had an impulse to dash water in her face. She had a stronger impulse to throw herself down beside Bonnie and shriek, “And neither can I! It’s insane!” But what good would that do?

A few minutes later Damon was talking quietly to Bonnie, unaffected by the outburst. Stefan was pacing in circles. Elena was trying to think of Plan A, while a little voice chanted inside her head, You can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t do it, either.

This was all just a phobia. They could probably train Bonnie out of it — if, say, they had a year or two.

Stefan, on one of his circular trips near her, said, “And how are you about heights, love?”

Elena decided to put a brave face on it. “I don’t know. I think I can do it.”

Stefan looked pleased. “To save your hometown.”

“Yes…but it’s too bad nothing works here. I could try to use my Wings for flying, but I can’t control them—” And that kind of magic is simply not available here, Stefan’s voice said in her mind.

But telepathy is. You can hear me, too, can’t you?

They thought of the answer simultaneously, and Elena saw the light of the idea breaking on Stefan’s face even as she began to speak.

“Influence Bonnie! Make her think she’s a tightrope walker — a performer since she was a toddler. But don’t make her too playful so she doesn’t bounce the rest of us off!”

With that light in his face, Stefan looked…too good. He seized both Elena’s hands, whirled her around once as if she weighed nothing, picked her up, and kissed her.

And kissed her.

And kissed her until Elena felt her soul dripping off her fingertips.

They shouldn’t have done it in front of Damon. But Elena’s euphoria was clouding her judgment, and she couldn’t control herself.

Neither of them had been trying for a deep mind probe. But telepathy was all they had left, and it was warm and wonderful and it left them for an instant in the circle of each other’s arms, laughing, panting — with electricity flashing between them.

Elena’s whole body felt as if she’d just gotten a sizable jolt.

Then she pulled herself out of his arms, but it was too late. Their shared gaze had gone on much too long, and Elena felt her heart pounding in fear. She could feel Damon’s eyes on her. She barely managed to whisper, “Will you tell them?”