Лиза Смит - The Return - Shadow Souls

“Well? What do you think?” Damon seemed to be trying to placate her.

“I still think it looks like Hell,” Elena said slowly. “I’d hate to live here.”

“Ah, but whoever said that we should live here, my Princess of Darkness? We’ll go back home, where the night is velvet black and the moon shines down, making everything silver.” Slowly, Damon traced one finger from her hand, up her arm to her shoulder. It sent an inner shiver through her.

She tried holding the veil up as a barrier against him, but it was too transparent. He still flashed that brilliant smile at her, dazzling through the diamond-dotted white — well, shell pink, of course, because of the light — that was on her side of the veil.

“Does this place have a moon?” she asked, trying to distract him. She was afraid — afraid of him — afraid of herself.

“Oh, yes: three or four of them, I think. But they’re very small and of course the sun never goes down, so you can’t see them as well. Not…romantic.” He smiled at her, again, slowly this time, and Elena looked away.

And in looking, she saw something in front of her that captured her entire attention. In a side street a cart had overturned, spilling large rolls made out of fur and leather. There was a thin, hungry-looking old woman attached to the cart like a beast, who was lying on the ground, and a tall angry man standing over her, raining down blows with a whip on her unprotected body.

The woman’s face was turned toward Elena. It was contorted in a grimace of anguish, as she tried ineffectually to roll into a ball, her hands over her stomach. She was naked from the waist up, but as the whip lashed into her flesh, her body from throat to waist was being covered by a coating of blood.

Elena felt herself swelling with Wing Powers, but somehow none would come. She willed with all her circulating life-force for something— anything —to break free from her shoulders, but it was no good. Maybe it had something to do with wearing the remains of slave bracelets. Maybe it was Damon, beside her, telling her in a forceful voice not to get involved.

To Elena, his words were no more than punctuation to the heartbeat pounding in her ears. She jerked the rope sharply out of his hands, and then scrambled out of the litter. In six or seven leaps she was beside the man with the whip.

He was a vampire, his fangs elongated at the sight of the blood before him, but never stopping his frenzied lashing. He was too strong for Elena to handle, but…

With one more step Elena was straddling the woman, both her arms flung out in the universal gesture of protection and defiance. Rope dangled from one wrist.

The slave owner was not impressed. He was already launching the next whiplash, and it struck Elena across the cheek and simultaneously opened a great gap in her thin summer top, slicing through her camisole and scoring the flesh underneath. As she gasped, the tail of the whip cut through her jeans as if denim were butter.

Tears formed involuntarily in Elena’s eyes, but she ignored them. She had managed not to make a sound other than that initial gasp. And she still stood exactly where she had first landed in protection. Elena could feel the wind whip at her tattered blouse, while her untouched veil waved behind her, as if to protect the poor slave who had collapsed against the ruined cart.

Elena was still desperately trying to bring out any kind of Wings. She wanted to fight with real weapons, and she had them, but she couldn’t force them to save either her or the poor slave behind her. Even without them Elena knew one thing. That bastard in front of her wasn’t going to touch his slave again, not unless he cut Elena into pieces first.

Someone stopped to stare, and someone else came out of a shop, running. When the children who’d been trailing her litter surrounded her, wailing, a crowd of sorts gathered.

Apparently it was one thing to see a merchant beating his worn-out drab — the people around here must have seen that almost daily. But to see this beautiful new girl having her clothes slashed away, this girl with hair like golden silk under a veil of gold and white, and eyes that perhaps reminded some of them of a barely remembered blue sky — that was quite another thing. Moreover, the new girl was obviously a fresh barbarian slave who had clearly humiliated her master by tearing the lead ropes from his hands and was standing now with her sanctity veil made into a mockery.

Terrific street theater.

And even given all of that, the slave owner was preparing for another stroke, raising his arm high and preparing to put his back into it. A few people in the crowd gasped; others were muttering indignantly. Elena’s new sense of hearing, turned up high, could catch their whispering. A girl like this wasn’t meant for the slums at all; she must have been destined for the heart of the city. Her aura alone was enough to show that. In fact, with that golden hair and those vivid blue eyes, she might even be a Guardian from the Other Side. Who knew—?

The lash that was raised never descended. Before it could, there was a flash of black lightning — pure Power — that sent half the crowd scattering. A vampire, young in appearance and dressed in the clothing of the upper world, Earth, had made his way to stand between the golden girl and the slave owner — or rather to loom over the now cringing slave owner. The few in the crowd not stirred by the girl immediately felt their hearts pulse at the sight of him . He was the girl’s owner, surely, and now he would see to the situation.

At that instant, Bonnie and Meredith arrived on the scene. They were reclining on their litter, decorously draped in their veils, Meredith in starry midnight blue and Bonnie in soft pale green. They could have been an illustration for The Arabian Nights .

But the moment they saw Damon and Elena, they most indecorously jumped off the litter. By now the crowd was so thick that working their way to the front required using elbows and knees, but in only seconds they were at Elena’s side, hands defiantly unbound or trailing rope that hung defiantly free, veils floating in the wind.

When they did arrive beside Elena, Meredith gasped. Bonnie’s eyes opened wide and stayed that way. Elena understood what they were seeing. Blood was flowing freely from the cut across her cheekbone and her blouse kept opening in the wind to reveal her torn and bloody camisole. One leg of her jeans was rapidly turning red.

But, drawn up into the protection of her shadow, was a far more pitiful figure. And as Meredith raised Elena’s diaphanous veil to help keep her blouse closed and once more enshroud her in decency, the woman herself raised her head, to look at the three girls with the eyes of a dumb and hunted animal.

Behind them, Damon said softly, “I shall quite enjoy this,” as he lifted the heavy man into the air with one hand and then struck his throat like a cobra. There was a hideous scream, which went on and on.

No one tried to interfere, and no one tried to cheer the slave owner on to make a fight.

Elena, scanning the faces of the crowd, realized why. She and her friends had become used to Damon — or as used as you could become to his half-tamed air of ferocity. But these people were getting their first look at the young man dressed all in black, of medium height and slim build, who made up for his lack of bulging muscle with a supple and deadly grace. This was enhanced by the gift of somehow dominating all the space around him, so that he effortlessly became the focal point of any picture — the way a black panther might become the focal point if it were walking lazily down a crowded city street.

Even here, where menace and an aspect of outright evil were commonplace, this young man exuded a quality of danger that made people want to stay out of his line of sight, much less his way.