Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

“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. “She will remember on her own.”

Stefan didn’t move or speak for long moments. Elena’s heart swelled. Suddenly she was as afraid as he clearly was. She went to him and took both his hands, which were shaking.

Darling, don’t cry, she sent. There must still be time to save Fell’s Church.

There must. It can’t end this way. And besides, Shinichi is gone! We can get to the children; we can break the conditioning…” She stopped. It was as if the word

“conditioning” echoed in her ears. Stefan’s green eyes were filling her vision. Her mind was getting…it was getting fuzzy. Everything was becoming unreal again. In a minute she wouldn’t be able to…

She wrenched her eyes away, breathing hard.

“You were Influencing me,” she said. She could hear the anger in her own voice.

“Yes,” Stefan whispered. “I’ve been Influencing you for half an hour.”

How dare you? Elena thought, just for him.

“I’m stopping it…now,” Stefan said quietly.

“As am I,” Sage added, sounding exhausted.

And the universe did a slow spin and Elena remembered what it was that they were all keeping from her.

With a wild sob, she rose, scattering droplets, coming to her feet like an avenging goddess. She looked at Sage. She looked at Stefan.

And Stefan proved how brave he was, how much he loved her. He told her what she already knew. “Damon is gone, Elena. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry if…if I kept you from being with him as much as you wanted to. I’m sorry if I came between you. I didn’t understand — how much you loved each other. I do now.” And then he dropped his face into his hands.

Elena wanted to go to him. To scold him, to hold him. To tell Stefan that she loved him just as much, drop for drop, grain for grain. But her body had gone numb, and the darkness was threatening again…all she could do was hold out her arms as she crumpled onto the grass. And then somehow Bonnie and Stefan were both there, the three of them all sobbing: Elena with the intensity of new discovery; Stefan with a lost sound that Elena had never heard before; and Bonnie with a dry, wrenching exhaustion that seemed to want to shatter her small body.

Time lost all meaning. Elena wanted to grieve for every moment of Damon’s painful death, and for every moment of his life, too. So much had been lost. She couldn’t get her head around it, and she didn’t want to do anything but cry until the kind darkness took her mind again.

That was when Sage broke.

He grabbed Elena and pulled her up, and shook her by the shoulders. It snapped her head back and forth.

“Your town is in ruins!” he shouted, as if this was her fault. “Midnight may or may not bring disaster. Oh, yes, I saw it all in your mind when I went in to Influence you.

Little Fell’s Church is already devastated. And you won’t even fight for it!”

Something blazed through Elena. It melted the numbness, the iciness. “Yes, I’ll fight for it!” she screamed. “I’ll fight for it with every breath in my body, until I stop the people who did it, or until they kill me!”

“And how, puis-je savoir, will you get back in time? By the time you walk back the way you came, it will all be over!”

Stefan was beside her, bracing her, shoulder to shoulder. “Then we’ll force you to send us some other way — so that we can get back in time!”

Elena stared. No. No. Stefan couldn’t have said that. Stefan didn’t force his way — and she wouldn’t have him changing himself. She whirled back on Sage.

“There’s no need to fight! I have a Master Key in my backpack, and magic works here inside the Gatehouse!” she cried.

But Stefan and Sage were staring each other down, each fierce and intent. Elena wanted to go to Stefan but the world was doing another of its slow somersaults.

She was afraid that Sage would attack Stefan, and that she couldn’t even fight for him.

But instead, suddenly, Sage threw back his head and laughed wildly. Or perhaps it was something between thunderous laughing and crying. It was as eerie as the sound of a wolf baying, and Elena felt Bonnie’s small, trembling body hug her — to comfort both of them.

“What the hell!” Sage bellowed, and now there was a wild look in his eyes, too.

“Mais oui, what the Hell?” He laughed again. “After all, I am the Gatekeeper, and I have already broken the rules by allowing you through two different doors.”

Stefan was still breathing hard. Now he reached out and grabbed Sage by his broad shoulders and shook him with the strength of a vampire gone mad. “What are you talking about? There’s no time for talk!”

“Ah, but there is, mon ami. My friend, there is. What you need is the firepower of the heavens to save Fell’s Church — and to undo the damage that has already been done. To wipe it out, to make it as if it had never happened. And,” Sage added deliberately, looking directly at Elena, “perhaps — just perhaps — to undo this day’s events, also.”

Suddenly every inch of Elena’s skin was tingling. Her whole body was listening to Sage, leaning toward him, yearning, while her eyes widened with the only other question that mattered.

Sage said, very softly, very triumphantly, “Yes. They can bestow life upon the dead. They have that Power. They can bring back mon petit tyran Damon — as they brought you back.”

Stefan and Bonnie were holding Elena up. She couldn’t stand on her own.

“But why would they help?” she whispered painfully. She wouldn’t allow herself even a breath of hope, not until she understood everything.

“In exchange for what was stolen from them millennia ago,” Sage replied. “You are in a fortress of Hell, you know. That is what the Gatehouse is. The Guardians cannot enter here. They cannot storm the gate and demand back what is inside… the seven — pardon, now six — kitsune treasures.”

Not a breath of hope. Not a breath. But Elena heard herself give a wild laugh.

“How do we give them a park? Or a field of black roses?”

“We give them the rights to the land that the park and the field of roses lie upon.”

Not a breath, even though the bodies on either side of Elena were shaking now.

“And how do we offer them the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life?”

“We do not. However, I have here various containers, waiting to be collected as garbage. The threat of a gallon bottle of La Fontaine randomly spread all over your Earth…that would devastate them. And, of course,” Sage added, “I know the kinds of gems with enchantments already upon them that they would most desire. Here, let me open the doors all at once! We take all we can — the rooms, strip them bare!”

His enthusiasm was contagious. Elena half-turned, breath held, eyes widened to catch the first glowing of a door’s light.

“Wait.” Stefan’s voice was hard suddenly. Bonnie and Elena turned back and froze, embracing each other, trembling. “What is your — your father — going to do to you when he finds out that you allowed this?”

“He will not kill me,” Sage said brusquely, the wild tone back in his voice. “He may even find it as amusant as I do, and we will be sharing a belly laugh tomorrow.”

“And if he doesn’t find it amusing? Sage, I don’t think…Damon wouldn’t have wanted—” Sage whirled around and for the first time since she had met him, Elena could believe with her whole soul that he was the son of his father. His eyes had even seemed to change color, to the yellow of a flame, with diamond pupils like a cat’s.