Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

His voice was like steel splintering, harder even than Stefan’s. “What is between my father and me is my own business — mine! Stay here if you want. He never bothers himself about vampires, anyway — he says they’re cursed already. But I am going to do everything I can to bring mon chéri Damon back.”

“Whatever the cost to you?”

“The hell with the cost!”

To Elena’s surprise, Stefan gripped Sage’s shoulders for a moment and then simply hugged as much of him as he could hold.

“I just wanted to make sure,” he said quietly. “Thank you, Sage. Thank you.” Then he turned and strode over to the Royal Radhika plant, and with one yank, pulled it out of its bower.

Elena, heart beating in her lips and throat and fingertips, ran to gather the empty containers and bottles Sage was tossing out of a ninth doorway that had appeared in between the mine shaft and the field of black roses. She snatched up a gallon container and an Evian water bottle, both with secure caps intact. They were made of plastic, which was good, because she dropped them both just going across the room to the bubbling fountain. Her hands were shaking that badly; and all the time she was sending up a monotonous prayer, Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please!

She got water into both containers at the Fountain and capped them. And then she realized that Bonnie was still standing in the middle of the Gatehouse. She looked bewildered, frightened.

“Bonnie?”

“Sage?” Bonnie said. “How do we get these things to the Celestial Court to bargain with them?”

“Have no worries,” Sage said kindly. “I am certain that Guardians will be waiting just outside to arrest us. They will take us to the Court.”

Bonnie didn’t stop trembling, but she nodded and hurried to help Sage get bottles of Black Magic — and break them. “A symbol,” he said. “Un signe of what we will do to this area if the Celestials don’t agree. Be careful not to cut your pretty hands.”

Elena thought she heard Bonnie’s husky voice then, and that it was not a happy tone. But Sage’s rumbling murmur was reassuring. And Elena would neither allow herself to hope nor despair. She had a task in hand, a scheme. She was making private Plans for the Celestial Court.

When she and Bonnie had all the plunder they could carry, and their backpacks were full as well, when Stefan had two narrow black boxes that held deeds, and when Sage looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a bronzed, gorgeous, long-haired Hercules, as he carried two sacks made of pillowcases, they gave one last look around at the ravaged Gatehouse.

“All right,” Sage said then. “Time to face the Guardians.” He smiled reassuringly at Bonnie.

As usual, Sage was right. The moment they came out with their booty, Guardians from two different dimensions were ready for them. The first type were the ones who looked vaguely like Elena: blond hair, dark blue eyes, slender. The Guardians of the Nether World seemed senior to these, and were lithe women with skin so dark it was almost ebony, and hair that curled tightly in a cap over their heads.

Behind them were brilliant golden air cars.

“You are under arrest,” one of the dark ones said, not looking as if she enjoyed her job, “for removing treasures that rightfully belong to the Celestial Court out of the sanctuary where it was agreed that they would be kept, under the laws of both our dimensions.”

And then it was only a matter of hanging on to the golden air cars while hanging on at the same time to their unlawful booty.

The Celestial Court was…celestial. Pearly white with a faint hint of blue. Minarets. It was a long distance from the heavily guarded gate — where Elena had seen a third type of Guardian, one with short red hair and slanted, piercing green eyes — to the actual palace, which seemed to encompass a city.

But it was when Elena’s group was guided to the throne room that the real culture shock hit. It was far larger and far more glorious than any room Elena had ever imagined. No ball or gala in the Dark Dimensions could have prepared her in the least for it. The cathedral ceiling seemed to be made entirely of gold, as were the double line of stately columns that marched vertically across the floor. The floor itself was of intricately patterned malachite and gold-threaded lapis lazuli, with gold seemingly used as grouting — and with a heavy hand at that. The three golden fountains in the middle of the room (the central one was the largest and most elaborate) threw into the air not water, but delicately perfumed flower petals that sparkled like diamonds in turning at their apex and then floated down again.

Stained-glass windows in brilliant colors that Elena couldn’t remember ever having seen before threw rainbow light like a benediction from high on every wall, giving warmth to the otherwise cool engraved gold.

Sage and Elena and Stefan and Bonnie were seated in small comfortable chairs just a few feet back from a great dais, draped with a fantastically woven golden cloth. The treasures were spread out in front of them, as attendants dressed in flowing blue and gold took the objects one by one up to the current ruling triumvirate in back.

The rulers comprised one each of the groups of Guardians — fair, dark, redheaded. Their seats on the dais ensured that they were far from — and high above — their petitioners. But with Power sent to her eyes, Elena could see perfectly well that they each sat on an exquisitely jeweled golden throne. They were speaking softly together, admiring the Royal Radhika flower — blue delphiniums at the moment. Then the dark one smiled and sent one of her attendants running for a pot with soil for the plant to survive in.

Elena stared sightlessly at the other treasures. A gallon of water from the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life. Six bottles of unbroken Black Magic wine, and the shards of at least that many around them. A blazing rainbow to rival the stainedglass windows in fist-sized gems, some raw, some already faceted and polished, but most of them not only faceted, but also hand-carved with mysterious gold or silver inscriptions. Two long, black, velvet-lined boxes with yellowing cylinders of papyrus or paper inside them, one with a pure black rose lying next to it, and the other with a simple spray of light springtime-green leaves. Elena knew what the yellowed documents with their cracked waxen seals were. The deeds to the field of black roses and the kitsune paradise.

When you saw all the treasures together like this, it almost seemed too much, Elena thought. Any one object from any one of the Seven — no, now Six — kitsune Treasures was enough to trade worlds for. One sprig of the Royal Radhika, which was even now being returned, (pink larkspur changing to a white orchid) properly potted again, was immeasurably precious. So was a single velvety black rose, with its power to hold the most powerful of magics. One jewel from the hoard in the mining cavern, maybe a double-fist-sized diamond that put the Star of Africa and the Golden Jubilee to shame. One day in the kitsune paradise, where a day could seem like a perfect lifetime. One sip of that effervescent water that could make a human live as long as the oldest Old One…

Of course there should also have been the largest star ball in existence, full of eldritch Power, but Elena was hoping that the Guardians would overlook that.

Hoping? She wondered and shook her head at nothing, causing Bonnie to squeeze her hand tightly. Not hoping. She didn’t dare hope. Not a breath yet.

Another attendant, red-haired, flashing them a cold green-eyed look, picked up the plastic gallon bottle that said Sector 3 Water on the label. Sage rumbled as she left, “Qu’est-ce qui lui prend? I mean, what is her problem? I like the water in the vampire sector. I don’t like the pump water in the Nether World.”