“You don’t have to do it,” Meredith said. “We can just leave.”
Bonnie stared at her. “Without the fox key?”
Elena shook her head. “We’ve already been through all that. The unanimous decision was to do it this way. She looked around. “Now where are the guys that wanted to see it so much?”
“Looking in the field — that used to be a ballroom,” Bonnie replied. “Or getting shovels — lots of ’em — from Bloddeuwedd’s gardening compound. Ow! Why’d you pinch me, Meredith?”
“Oh, my, did that pinch? I meant to do this —”
But Elena was already striding away, as eager now as Damon was to get it over with. Half over with. I just hope he remembers to change into his leather jacket and black jeans, she thought. In white tie — the blood—
I won’t let there be any blood.
The thought was sudden and Elena didn’t know where it came from. But in the deepest reaches of her being, she thought: he’s been punished enough . He was trembling in the litter. He thought about another person’s well-being from minute to minute. It’s enough now. Stefan wouldn’t want him to be hurt any more.
She glanced up to see one of the Dark Dimension’s small, misshapen moons moving visibly above her. This time the surrender she made to it was bright red, a feather shining in sullen crimson light. But she gave herself up to it unreservedly, body and soul, and it rested on the hallowed spring of eternal blood that was her womanhood. And then she knew what she had to do.
“Bonnie, Meredith, look: we’re a triumvirate. We have to try to share this with Damon.”
No one looked enthusiastic.
Elena, whose pride had been entirely broken from the moment she first saw Stefan in his cell, knelt down in front of them on the hard marble step. “I’m begging you—”
“Elena! Stop that!” Meredith gasped.
“Please get up! Oh, Elena—” Bonnie was a breath away from tears.
And so, it was small, softhearted Bonnie who turned the tide. “I’ll try to teach Meredith how. But anyway, we’ll at least share it between the three of us.”
Hug. Kiss. A murmur into strawberry hair, “I know what you see in the dark. You’re the bravest person I know.”
And then, leaving a stunned Bonnie behind, Elena went to collect spectators for her own whipping.
37
Elena had been tied, like someone in a B-movie who will soon be released, standing upright against a pillar. Digging on the field was still going on in a dilatory way as the vampires who had put her up to this fetched an ash stick they had brought, and allowed Damon to inspect it. Damon himself was moving in slow motion. Trying to find points to kibitz about. Waiting for the rattling of coach wheels that would tell him the carriage was back. Acting brisk, but inside feeling as sluggish as half-cooled lead.
I’ve never been a sadist, he thought. I’ve always tried to give pleasure — except in fights. But it should be me in that prison cell. Can’t Elena see that? It’s my turn beneath the lash now.
He had changed into his “magician clothes,” taking as long as he dared without looking as if he wanted to put this off. And now there were somewhere between six and eight hundred creatures, waiting to see Elena’s blood spill, to watch Elena’s back cut and miraculously heal again.
All right. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to do this.
He came into his body, into the now of what was happening.
Elena swallowed. “Share the pain” she’d said — without in the least knowing how to do it. But here she was, like a sacrifice tied to a pillar, staring at Bloddeuwedd’s house and waiting for the blows to come.
Damon was giving the crowd an introductory speech, talking gibberish and doing it very well. Elena found a particular window of the house to stare at. And then she realized that Damon was no longer speaking.
A touch of the rod against her back. A telepathic whisper.
Are you ready?
Yes, she said immediately, knowing that she wasn’t. And then hearing, against dead silence, a swish through the air.
Bonnie’s mind floating into hers. Meredith’s mind flowing like a stream. The blow was a mere cuff, although Elena felt blood spill.
She could feel Damon’s bewilderment. What should have been a sword slash was a mere slap. Painful, but definitely bearable.
And once again. The triumvirate portioned out the pain before Damon’s mind could receive it.
Keep the triangle moving. And a third.
Two more to go. Elena allowed her gaze to wander over the house. Up to the third floor where Bloddeuwedd had to be enraged at what had become of her party.
One more to go. The voice of a guest coming back to her. “That library. She has more orbs than most public libraries, and” —with his voice dropping for a moment— “they say she has all sorts of spheres up there. Forbidden ones. You know.”
Elena hadn’t known and still could still hardly imagine what might be forbidden here .
In her library, Bloddeuwedd, a single, lonely figure, moved in the brilliantly lighted great sphere to find a new orb. Inside the house music would be playing, different music in each different room. Outside, Elena could hear nothing.
The last blow. The triumvirate managed to handle it, allotting agonizing pain amongst four people. At least, Elena thought, my dress was already as red as it could be.
And then it was over, and Bonnie and Meredith were quarrelling with some of the vampire ladies who wanted to help bathe the blood from Elena’s back, showing it once again unblemished and perfect, glowing golden in the sunlight.
Better keep them away , Elena thought rather drowsily to Damon; some of them may be compulsive nail-biters or finger-lickers. We can’t afford for anyone to taste my blood and feel the life-force in it; not when I’ve gone through so much to conceal my aura .
Although there was clapping and cheering everywhere, no one had thought to untie Elena’s wrists. So she stood leaning against the pillar, gazing at the library.
And then the world froze.
All around her was music and motion. She was the still point in a turning universe. But she had to get moving, and fast. She yanked hard at her bonds, lacerating herself.
“Meredith! Untie me! Cut these ropes, quick!”
Meredith obeyed hastily.
When Elena turned, she knew what she would see. The face — Damon’s face, bewildered, half-resentful, half-humble. It was good enough for her, right then.
Damon, we need to get to the —
But then they were engulfed by a riot. Well-wishers, fans, skeptics, vampires begging for “a tiny taste,” gogglers who wanted to make sure that Elena’s back was real and warm and unmarked. Elena felt too many hands on her body.
“Get away from her, damn you!” It was the primal savage roar of a beast defending its mate. People backed away from Elena, only to close in…very slowly and timidly…on Damon.
All right, Elena thought. I’ll do it alone. I can do it alone. For Stefan, I can.
She shouldered her way through the crowd, accepting bunches of hastily dug-up flowers from admirers — and feeling more hands on her body. “Hey, she really isn’t marked!” At last, Meredith and Bonnie helped her to get out — without them she would never have made it.
And then she was running, running into the house, not bothering to use the door that was near to Saber’s barking place. She thought she knew what was there anyway.
On the second floor she spent a minute being bewildered before seeing a thin red line in nothingness. Her blood! See how many things it was good for? Right now it highlighted the first of the glass steps for her, the one she had stumbled into before.
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