Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Then Elena stepped back so that they formed a triangle around Shinichi.

“Don’t even think of attacking,” Damon said pleasantly.

Shinichi gave a weak shrug. “Attack you? Why bother? You’ll have nothing to go back to, even if I die. The children are pre-programmed to kill. But”—with sudden vehemence—“I wish we’d never come to your damned little town at all — and I wish we’d never followed Her orders. I wish I’d never let Misao near Her! I wish we hadn’t—” He stopped speaking suddenly. No, it was more than that, Elena thought.

He froze, eyes wide open and staring. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that! I didn’t mean it! I have no regrets—” Elena had the feeling of something coming at them at tremendous speed, so fast, in fact, that she just had time to open her mouth before it hit Shinichi.

Whatever it was, it killed him cleanly and passed by without touching anyone else.

Shinichi fell facedown onto the dirt.

“Don’t bother,” Elena said softly, as Stefan reflexively moved toward the corpse.

“He’s dead. He did it to himself.”

“But how?” Stefan and Damon demanded in chorus.

“I’m not the expert,” Elena said. “Meredith is the expert on this. But she told me that kitsune could only be killed by destroying their star balls, shooting them with a blessed bullet…or by the ‘Sin of Regret.’ Meredith and I didn’t know what that meant back then — it was before we had even gone into the Dark Dimension. But I think we just now saw it in action.”

“So you can’t be a kitsune and regret anything you’ve done? That’s — harsh,” Stefan said.

“Not at all,” Damon said crisply. “Although, if it had operated for vampires, no doubt you would have been permanently dead when you woke up in the family vault.”

“Earlier,” Stefan said expressionlessly. “I regreted striking you a mortal blow, even as I was dying. You’ve always said I feel too guilty, but that is one thing I would give my life to take back.”

There was a silence that stretched and stretched. Damon was at the front of the group now, and no one but Bonnie could see his face.

Suddenly Elena grabbed Stefan’s hand. “We still have a chance!” she told him.

“Bonnie and I saw something bright that way! Let’s run!” He and Elena passed Damon running and he grabbed Bonnie’s hand too. “Like the wind, Bonnie!”

“But with Shinichi dead — well, do we really have to find his star ball or the biggest star ball or whatever is hidden in this awful place?” Bonnie asked. Once, she would have whined, Elena thought. Now, despite whatever pain she felt, she was running.

“We do have to find it, I’m afraid,” Stefan said. “Because from what he said, Shinichi wasn’t at the top of the ladder after all. He and his sister were working for someone, someone female. And whoever She is, She may be attacking Fell’s Church right now.”

“The odds have just shifted,” Elena said. “We have an unknown enemy.”

“But still—”

“All bets,” Elena said, “are off.”

Matt broke a lot of traffic rules on the way to the Saitous’ street. Meredith leaned on the console between the two front seats so that she could see the digital clock ticking down to midnight, and so that she could watch the transformation of Mrs.

Flowers. At last her recently sane, sensible mind forced words out of her mouth.

“Mrs. Flowers — you’re changing.”

“Yes, Meredith, dear. Some of it is due to the little present that Sage left for me.

Some of it is my own will — to return to the days when I was in my prime. I believe that this will be my last fight, so I don’t mind using all my energy in it. Fell’s Church must be saved.”

“But — Mrs. Flowers — the people here — well, they haven’t always been — exactly nice—” Matt stammered his way to a stop.

“The people here are like people everywhere,” Mrs. Flowers said calmly. “Treat them as you’d like to be treated, and things will be fine. It was only when I’d let myself become a bitter, lonely old woman, always resentful of the fact that I had had to turn my home into a boardinghouse just to make ends meet, that people began to treat me — well, at best as a loony old hag.”

“Oh, Mrs. Flowers — and we’ve been such a bother to you!” Meredith found the words coming without her volition.

“You’ve been the saving of me, child. Dear Stefan was the start, but as you can imagine, he didn’t want to explain all his little differences to me, and I was suspicious of him. But he was always cordial and respectful and Elena was like sunlight, and Bonnie like laughter. Eventually, when I dropped my hidebound barriers, so did you young ones. I won’t say more about those who are present so as not to embarrass you, but you’ve done me a world of good.”

Matt ran another stop sign and cleared his throat. Then, the steering wheel wavering slightly, he cleared his throat again.

Meredith took over. “I think what Matt and I both want to say is…well, it’s that you’ve become very special to us, and we don’t want to see you get hurt. This battle—”

“Is a battle for all I hold dear. For all my memories. Back when I was a child and the boardinghouse was built — it was just a home, then, and I was very happy. As a young woman, I was very happy. And now that I have lived long enough to be an old woman — well, besides you children, I still have friends like Sophia Alpert and Orime Saitou. They are both healing women, and very good at it. We still talk about different uses for my herbs.”

Matt snapped his fingers. “That’s another reason I was confused,” he said.

“Because Dr. Alpert said that you and Mrs. Saitou were such good people. I thought she meant the old Mrs. Saitou—”

“Who is not a ‘Mrs. Saitou’ at all,” Mrs. Flowers said, almost sharply. “I have no idea what her name really is — perhaps she is really Inari, a deity gone bad. Ten years ago, I didn’t know what made Orime Saitou suddenly so diffident and quiet.

Now I realize that it began just around the time her ‘mother’ moved in with her. I was quite fond of young Isobel, but she suddenly became — aloof — in an unchildlike way.

Now I understand. And I am determined to fight for her — and for you — and for a town that is worth saving. Human lives are very, very precious. And now — here we are.”

Matt had just turned onto the Saitous’ block. Meredith took a moment to openly stare at the figure in the front passenger seat. “Mrs. Flowers!” she exclaimed.

This made Matt turn to stare in his turn and what he saw made him clip a Volkswagen Jetta parked by the sidewalk.

“Mrs…. Flowers?”

“Please park now, Matt. You needn’t call me Mrs. Flowers if you don’t want to. I have returned to the time when I was Theophilia — when my friends called me Theo.”

“But — how — why—?” Matt stuttered.

“I told you. I felt that it was time. Sage left me a gift that helped me change. An enemy beyond your powers to fight has arisen. I felt this back at the boardinghouse. This is the time that I have been waiting for. The last battle with the true enemy of Fell’s Church.”

Meredith’s heart actually seemed ready to fly out of her chest. She had to be calm — calm and logical. She had seen magic many times. She knew the look of it, the feel of it. But frequently she had been too busy comforting Bonnie, or too worried about aiding Bonnie to take in what she was facing.

Now, it was just her and Matt — and Matt had a stricken, stupefied look, as if he hadn’t seen enough magic before. As if he might crack.

“Matt,” she said loudly, and then even louder, “Matt!” He turned, then, to look at her, with his blue eyes wild and dark.