An Untold Tale
This is a story
about the first time that Bonnie met Damon—the real first time.
Damon shimmered out of being a crow,
and felt his feet gently deposit him the last quarter inch of an inch on the
ground. Absently, he brushed away a few stray feathers, not bothering with his
hair because it was so fine it would soon flop back into his eyes on its own.
He was in Fell’s Church at last and
it was everything he had heard about. Ley lines, straight as spears piecing the
ground in all directions and forming pockets of wild magic here and there,
mostly concentrating in the heavily forested state park that almost surrounded
the town.
This was going to be . . . fun.
Little brother had chosen a marvelously wicked little village to pretend to be
human in.
But something was bothering him,
niggling to get his attention. He had changed just downwind of two beings whose
smell was unique. And if the wind switched direction, they would most likely
try to savage him, thinking in their instinct-directed way that it was two
against one. It would be a massacre, yes, but not of him.
He was about to change into a crow
again, dive-bombing them and regaining his form at the last second, when he
notice a third faint pulsing aura in a dark building up ahead. It was very faint, but he was certain it wasn’t
his imagination. Perhaps the smell of the werewolves lying in wait gave him a
clue.
A maiden. A young girl inside the
dark building in which nobody lived and slept. The werewolves were, for some
reason, not breaking in to attack her. Damon puzzled over it for a minute or so
and finally gave up. The hour was perfect, the darkness palpable, the
girl-child was either alone or with a human who did not radiate on the aura
spectrum at all. A dud.
As easily as if it were daylight,
Damon’s vampire eyes read the words on the building. Robert E. Lee Library.
Shrugging—Damon didn’t understand
werewolves and never would, he almost turned and walked away. But the girl was
so young, and the library would all be so pristine. The thought of the innocent
books being splattered with blood and—other things—did not appeal. He turned.
If not one kind of fun, then
another. He stretched his senses to their very utmost. Yes, a human maiden—very
young.
Damon smiled.
* * * * *
Bonnie McCullogh laboriously typed
into her laptop, while reading from a pink Post-It note covered with neat round
handwriting that included little circles over the i’s: The Conscience of A Queen.
It was her history report, which
would determine thirty-percent of her first semester grade in European History.
And she had a good idea for it, a really good idea: original, easy to
understand and thought-provoking. What, so her theory ran, would have become of
England if Catherine of Aragon had had not been so obedient to the husband who
had disowned her, and had allied herself with Spain (where she came from) and
then led these forces combined with the English who were still loyal to her and
had fought Henry VIII’s army. She had been advised to do so often, and only her
refusal to take up arms against her husband had stopped the army from rebelling
against Henry. Catherine might have been able to establish her little daughter,
Mary, successfully as the heir, instead of letting Henry have his way in
everything; and Henry’s second daughter,
by Anne Boleyn, who became Queen Elizabeth, would never even have been born.
No Queen Elizabeth! No Sir Walter
Raleigh! No British Empire—probably no United States of America! Nothing would
have happened the way it had down to modern times.
A ferociously huge pile of history
books loomed over Bonnie on her right. An equally formidable pile leaned over
her from the left. Most of them had Post- Its stuck in them, where she had
found evidence to bolster her theory.
There was only one problem, Bonnie
thought, her strawberry-curled head drooping almost to the library table. The
report was due the day after tomorrow and all she had written was the title.
Somehow she had to combine the facts
from these books that held evidence to uphold her theory. Other facts were
waiting for her out there on the Internet, represented right now by the
cheerfully lit computer screen in front of her. But how, how to make a coherent
paper out of them in only two days?
Of course, she could ask for an
extension. But she could just imagine the look on Mr. Tanner’s face if she did
so. He would embarrass her mercilessly in front of the class.
I can go without sleep for two days,
Bonnie thought resolutely.
As if triggered by her thought, the
lights of the library went off and then on and then repeated the cycle.
Oh, no! Ten o’clock already? And she
seriously needed some caffeine. Bonnie reached toward the bag beside her, then
hesitated.
Her hunches, as always, were good
ones. Mr. Breyer, the part-time librarian, came walking down the aisle,
glancing at the study carrels left and right.
“Why—Bonnie! Are you still here?”
“Apparently,” Bonnie said with a
nervous laugh. Everything depended on her acting abilities right now.
“Well, but, the library’s closing.
Didn’t you see the lights?” Bonnie had heard that Mr. Breyer always whispered
inside the library, even before opening and after closing time. Now she could
confirm that it was true.
“Mr. Breyer, I want to ask a favor,”
Bonnie said, looking up at him as soulfully as she could through her brown
eyes.
“What favor?” Now Mr. Breyer wasn’t
smiling anymore.
“I want,” Bonnie said and stood up,
which at least allowed her to see Mr. Breyer’s face, “to stay in the library
overnight.”
Mr. Breyer was shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, Bonnie. But the library
closes at ten, no exceptions. Think you’re the only one who’s asked me?” Mr.
Breyer drew himself up, and murmured for a moment, as if counting. “Why, you’re
the twenty-forth student to ask that very question.” He seemed to take some
comfort in precision. He was picking up her backpack to hand it to her. Bonnie
hastily took it, worried it would slosh. “And I told each of those who asked
the same thing I’m telling you: ‘The library closes at ten, but tomorrow is
another day.’”
“Not for me it’s not!” Bonnie felt
genuine tears flood her eyes and flow over her cheeks. “Oh, Mr. Breyer, I won’t
go outside until morning. I’ll be locked in here”—with all the ghosts and the
spooky shadows, her mind added involuntarily—”safe as—safe as anything, until
tomorrow morning. Nothing can get me.”
“But think of your poor mother—”
Bonnie shook her head. “She thinks I’m
at my friend Meredith’s house.”
“Oh, my,”—under the brightened
library lights, Mr. Breyer seemed to be considering. He even smiled. “We used
to do the same thing ourselves as children,” he murmured. “Tell one parent one
house and another the first house. ‘Double alibi,’ we called it.’” He was
almost beaming.
“So you’ll let me stay?” Bonnie
gazed up at him pathetically.
“What? Oh, no. No. Never. It was a most reprehensible thing
to do and we were caught and thoroughly punished for it,” Mr. Breyer said,
looking as if this reminiscence were as pleasant as the other.
“No, Bonnie,” Mr. Breyer added
firmly. “I’m sure you can do some research when you’re at home. There’s more on
the Internet than there is in all these books together,” he said, waving a hand
at the books Bonnie had scattered with Post-It notes in favor of her theory
about Catherine of Aragon. “But you yourself have to be out of the library now. Pronto! It’s six minutes after ten
o’clock anyway!” He sounded horrified at his own lateness.
Great. Well, as Elena would say,
when Plan A doesn’t work, go to Plan B. “Okay, Mr. Breyer. You can’t blame a
girl for trying. Let me just get my pencil, and my lucky Elmo doll”—this was a
small suction-cup doll that Bonnie always took with her on studying
expeditions, and exams—”and I’ll go to the bathroom, and then go home.”
“The bathrooms are closed.” Mr.
Breyer eyed Bonnie’s tear-streaked face uncomfortably. “But they don’t lock. I
suppose you can go.”
“Thank you, Mr. Breyer,” Bonnie
said, looking up at him as soulfully as if this favor was as important as
letting her staying overnight. She swung her backpack over one shoulder and
left the study carrel. She also left a mess of crumpled papers, stubs of
pencils, and old Styrofoam cups she knew Mr. Breyer wouldn’t be able to resist
taking to the trash in back.
A few minutes later, Bonnie’s
cheerful, “Good night, Mr. Breyer,” echoed through the library, followed by the
sound of the small library’s door shutting. Mr. Breyer himself called back, “Good
night, Bonnie.” He made sure, however, as he shut the library’s front doors,
that the bright green Volkswagen Bug Bonnie always drove was gone from the
parking lot. Bonnie McCullough and her friends had a reputation for mischief.
Bonnie, who had crept back into the
library after loudly “leaving” to perch with her feet on the seat of a toilet
in the girl’s restroom, waited until the lights went out. This took a kind of
courage she was seldom able to achieve. Shivering, with tears still leaking out
beneath her eyelashes, she immediately broke Rule 1 of Plan B by turning on the
powerful flashlight she had in her backpack without counting to a hundred. Then
the darkness was bearable—almost. But at least she wasn’t afraid of being
caught anymore. Everyone knew that Mr. Breyer left the parking lot and went
straight home like clockwork.
As soon as she got the flashlight on
she tumbled out of the bathroom stall and turned on the bathroom lights. That
made her feel a lot better. And when she’d switched on the lights in the
computer wing of the library, she knew she was safe.
Go away! she told a worry that
wouldn’t leave the back of her mind. I’ve done it! I’m fine! Now all I need is
some caffeine! She scrabbled around in her backpack for a thermos flask that
was entirely filled with the strongest coffee she’d been able to make from
heaping tablespoons of instant—and popped two No Dozes just to make sure as she
took a swig. Now, she was ready for a long, long night with these reference
books. Bonnie took her shoes off, unlatched her computer determinedly, and went
to work.
* * * * *
Outside, there were two dark shadows
hunched on the ground. One was delicately crunching on something small with
whiskers.
“You see?” the other said in a
guttural voice. “It’s best to come where the lines of Power cross in the
ground. The meat is sweeter.”
“I do see,” the second one said, and
its voice was thick because a mouse tail was being slurped into its mouth. “The
ley lines give Power to the life-force.”
“But there’s far sweeter meat—human
meat—waiting inside there,” chuckled
the guttural voice. “I know all the rules of this library. That little
redheaded girl must be locked inside until morning. What a bonus! And then
tomorrow morning along comes the Lady Librarian and they’re both alone inside.
Gotta love the ladies!”
There was a slavering sound that
stopped abruptly. “After these kills we’ll have to go away,” the second voice
whispered. “They’ll hunt us with dogs; they’ll find our scent.”
“They will not,” the guttural voice
replied. “They may get our scent but we’ll take the library lady’s car and lose
them on a freeway. We’ll get away, all right.”
The other voice let out a grating
laugh. “You should know, brother! You should know about dogs!”
“Now shut up and let me sleep in
peace. Wake me at dawn tomorrow and we’ll have two nice, tender females—and a
head start.”
The grating voice shut up. Its owner
did not want to say that there was a feeling of unease—of worry—at the back of
its mind.
To say that would be stupid. They
were werewolves wandering footloose in the human world, in a town where nobody
knew them, no one had cause to fear them, and above all, no one had any reason
to suspect what they really were.
They were invincible.
And, sure of that, they both
completely failed to notice a shadow just below and downwind of them. That,
actually, was understandable, since it was virtually impossible to sense Damon
when he was in hunting mode. His aura was drawn in skin-tight, he wore clothes
as black as the night, and he kept to the deepest shadows where ebony would not
be spotted.
This plan now, to kill two people in
the library tomorrow—he really should be ignoring it. They were hunters, just
as he was . . . like hell they were! Damon
Salvatore found himself bridling at the thought. They preyed on the weak and
the young—and, inevitably, they killed. Damon knew many proud, disciplined
werewolves and shapeshifters—and these drifters were not among them.
Well, then, perhaps it was time to
check out a book or two . . . his way.
* * * * *
Despite the luxury of sinking her
toes into the thick pile of the plush carpet (just under a sign that said SHOES
MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES), Bonnie had a faint feeling of unease that wouldn’t
go away.
She didn’t know what it was. She
knew—she could feel somehow—that
there was nobody in the library. But still, at the back of her mind, she was
tense.
At the back of her mind—hey, that
was it! All that darkness behind her. Bonnie really, really hated darkness.
You should never have read that book
on palm-reading, her mind scolded her. It’s given you all sorts of ideas. Now somewhere
inside you really believe that you’re psychic.
Thank God she hadn’t told anyone so.
What would Caroline and Meredith say? What would Raymond, her current
boyfriend, say? Most important, what would Elena
say?
But Grannie MacLachlan, who had
always known where to find lost keys and missing TV remotes and who had always
known when the phone was going to ring—she had looked gravely into Bonnie’s
hand the last time she had visited Bonnie’s family.
“A life full of excitement,” she had
said, slowly and thoughtfully, “but not a life of stability. And you have the
Sight, my girl. Far more so than any MacLachlan before you. Add to that talents
of the McCulloughs, and—” She had looked sharply up at Bonnie, who at age
thirteen would much rather have been playing with her friends, or checking out
boys. “Do ye ken what I’m talking about at all, girl?”
Bonnie had shaken her flyaway red
hair, looking up into the grave, gray old eyes that usually were twinkling with
delight over her grandchildren, or gazing peacefully off into some distant
landscape. Now those gray eyes were troubled, worrying about Bonnie.
“No,” Grannie had said, “ye ken
nothing about it now. But you will, my girl. While you’re still a lassie, you
will.”
Well, Bonnie interrupted her own
musing, I don’t have time to “ken” that now. I have to “ken” Catherine of
Aragon. And I have to work fast. She
picked up a book and turned it to the first pink Post-It note she found.
* * * * *
The figure that belonged to the
guttural voice and the figure that belonged to the grating voice were lying
back, trying to sleep, but bothered in their minds.
“I’d like to see the girl inside
that building right now,” the grating
voice whined.
There was the sound of a sharp blow.
“You wanna ruin everything, after
all my research?” demanded the guttural voice. “You wanna break a window—maybe
set off an alarm? Well, go ahead—you won’t get any help from me. I’ll just be a face in the crowd. You’ll take the whole rap for the girl.”
The higher voice whined, “I didn’t
mean to do anything to the girl. I only wanted to sniff at the doors and
windows.”
There was the sound of another sharp
cuff, and a whimper. “I know your sniffings,” snarled the guttural voice. “They
end in pawings and pryings and broken glass, and then you say, ‘Well since the
window is already broken, I guess I’ll go in. Idiot! Imbecile! I should never
have invited you!”
For a while there was no noise
except the soft whimpering.
“Ad dis way we wod’ ged indo
drouble?” the higher-pitched voice asked finally. The blows to its owner’s nose
had been not only painful, but disabling. Who could smell with a nose full of
clotting blood? The owner rubbed it tenderly.
“I’ve told you and told you! We’ll
be in the next county—hell, in the next state before anyone else comes to the
library. We’ll have plenty of time to run!”
There was a pause and then the
higher voice said slowly, “Ad de sweed lady librarian will oped de door.” It
giggled.
“Yes,” the guttural voice said
smugly. “The woman opens the door. Then we force her and the girl into her car.
Dead or alive, they come with us, and we’ll be snugged up safe somewhere long
before anyone misses them. Who goes straight to the library on Friday morning?”
There was a pause. Then, almost
timidly, the other said, “But whad if subone comes wid de woman?”
“Divide and conquer. It won’t be the
first time we’ve taken on three. One’s a little girl!”
“Bud . . . “
“But, but, but! This better be a
good one or I’ll kick your butt!”
A moment’s pause, then, slowly “Bud
. . . I know a lod about alarms. I maybe could turn this one off. Then we could
have the girl for”—there was a sucking, slurping sound, like a straw reaching
the bottom of a glass—”for hours. Ride now. We could play . . . games.”
There was a long pause and then the
guttural, growling voice spoke again. But it seemed less annoyed, even somewhat
less rasping as it replied, “It’s not a bad idea. It might even help when the
woman comes in the morning—”
“Ad the girl! She’ll be so sweet . .
. and the games we can blay in the dark . . .”
“All right! All right!” the guttural
voice growled. “First we have to check the alarm, see if it’s one you know.”
“Okay,” The second voice gasped
triumphantly. “Should we Change?
“We stay like this, half-changed,”
the growler said. “When she sees us like this she’ll go crazy from fear.”
“We can play good wolf, bad wolf.
She’ll run right into our arms.”
“She’ll scream,” rasped the growler,
“Scream and beg. No help will come. No help.”
Together, he and the other werewolf
slithered through bushes, heading for the library.
* * * * *
Downwind, Damon smiled a very
sharp-toothed smile.
* * * * *
Tick.
Bonnie could see nothing, could hear
nothing now from the front of the library, but she was sure she’d heard a Tick.
What could it mean? There was no
illumination in the main room of the library from either overhead lighting or
flashlight, and that would be the first thing a teacher or janitor would do,
wouldn’t it? Turn on some kind of light.
Unless the person wasn’t coming to
ensure obedience to the school rules. Unless the person—the thing—had come for her.
Bonnie didn’t believe in ghosts, not
really. But inside her mind were hundreds of locked doors, each of which held
behind it a boogeyman. They were bogeymen she had shut firmly behind doors when
she was a child, but at night—at night they had a tendency to come out.
And so did Bonnie’s own instincts,
like those of a cat. In fact, when the bogeymen unlocked their doors and came
out at her, she became more animal than human. She simply let her own instincts
take her where they wanted.
The overhead light in the computer
wing went out.
And Bonnie’s instincts, in two
bounds, took her ten feet to the right. Bonnie landed on palms and tiptoes,
feline, as she heard a crash.
Something
had
landed on her chair. And—it had splintered the chair to pieces.
“Hey, girl—come this way. There’s an
exit!” whispered a human-sounding voice. In fact, it sounded like a nice boy,
not much older than Bonnie. But Bonnie had an instinctive distrust of the
voice. It was too much of a coincidence that a nice boy should have come in
with a monster.
Rapidly, on hands and knees, she
began to scuttle away from the voice and the chair. She found a dark corner in
the children’s section to defend herself in. Lightly and softly as a spring
leaf she slipped under a child-sized table.
“You—you monster,” the nice voice
was saying. “Take me! Just leave the girl out of it!”
“The meat is sweet;” chanted a
guttural voice. “And so is the smell of fear so near.” It began to laugh
insanely.
“I’m not afraid of you,” the nice
voice said. Then another whisper. “C’mon, kid. I’m not going to hurt you, I
promise. Head to my voice.”
Bonnie didn’t move. Not simply
because she didn’t trust the nice voice. She didn’t move because she couldn’t.
Her muscles were frozen in place, while her mind whirled.
Meredith was right Meredith was
right why was Meredith always right? By the time someone found
Bonnie, Bonnie would be a pile of cracked and polished bones. and Meredith
would only know then that Bonnie had just pretended to be convinced that
spending the night at the library was a really stupid idea.
Bonnie was good at talking fast—even
to herself. All that went though her head before the echoes of the nice voice
had faded.
She was wedged into the corner now,
under the table, protected on three sides but wide open on the fourth. And she
had no weapon at all.
Timidly, like spiders that she sent
out scurrying on missions in opposite directions, she tiptoed her fingers away
from her. She knew Mr. Breyer and Ms. Kemp kept what they could see of the
library spotless. She also knew that they were both short-sighted and that
there was a whole treasure trove of garbage underneath the library tables.
After a moment her terrified left
hand came into contact with something that rolled slightly and was high and
curved and—oh, God, it was only an old plastic cup, a big one, sure, but what
was it going to do against an enemy? Beware!
Or you will feel the wrath of my dread fast food cup!
But her trembling right hand came
across a real find. A ruler. And not just any ruler, a steel-edged one. Hurriedly, she switched the objects in her hands,
since she was left-handed, just as the nice voice reached the end of the table
on her right. “Quick,” it whispered, “reach for my hand now.”
There was no way Bonnie was going to
reach for his hand ever, but
especially not now that his voice had taken on a glutinous, sticky quality, as
if he were trying not to salivate.
“We’re heeeeere,” said a
lower-pitched voice from the left. It seemed to be coming closer and closer,
just at the same pace of the nice voice.
And then there was a sound from the
table.
Tick.
The noise sounded on her right.
Tick.
The noise sounded on her left.
Like a piece of sharp bone or claw
being tapped on the table top.
Tick.
Okay. There was no way for Bonnie to
avoid the truth now. There were two things
in the dark with her, and they were getting closer and closer, and she
could barely see out between the two child-sized chairs she’d scuttled past
before getting beneath the table. Something was weird, she realized suddenly.
When she’d dashed under the table, she hadn’t been able to see at all—it had
been a blind, instinctive rush. Now she could see, if just faintly, from the
library’s high-up windows.
But she’d bet that the two things
could see much better in the dark than she could. They knew exactly where she
was. And this hunch was terrifyingly confirmed when the next tick came from the back of a
chair—lower than the table.
They’ve found you.
Tick.
Tick.
Lower still.
They can see you. In one minute they’ll cut off your only means of escape.
Tick.
Tick. Tick . . .
“Come on out,” the “nice” voice said, and now it was no longer pretending to be
nice, but slavering and slobbering. “Come out and play . . . or should we come
in and get you?”
GET OUT! Bonnie’s mind
screamed at her.
“I know some fun games we can play
togeth—”
NOW!
Bonnie shot out of the opening
between the chairs like a rabbit across a field. As she did, she flung out both
hands—wildly, hysterically, not knowing what she hoped to do with the objects
but striking out with them anyway.
Meredith had once tried to explain
to Bonnie that panic responses like this had a purpose. When a conscious mind
doesn’t know what to do, it resorts to panic—trying behaviors that no sane mind
would come up with. That occasionally resulted in the discovery of a new and
useful behavior, Meredith said. Bonnie had never quite understood this, but now
she was seeing it in action.
When Bonnie rocketed out of the
space between the chairs, she thrust the plastic cup with all her force to the
right and it happened to catch the slavering werewolf with its long muzzle
closed. The force of Bonnie’s thrust jammed the cup all the way up to the
animal’s jaw.
With her dominant left hand Bonne
slashed out with all her strength with the steel ruler, catching the other
werewolf directly across one eye. It gave a screaming howl and reared back.
Then everything went white.
It went white because somebody—one
of the two monsters, Bonnie thought—had turned the lights on. They had nothing
more to gain by darkness so they might as well show their true forms.
Bonnie couldn’t help—no she really couldn’t help—but take a glance back to
see what their true forms were.
They were hideous. And they were
very clearly werewolves. Bonnie thought that all wolves were beautiful and that
some people were beautiful, but the creature you got when you combined them was
absolutely hideous. Besides being lank and hairy with too-long paws for hands
and feet, their beautiful wolf- faces were horribly combined with round
human-like skulls, and eyes that faced forward, like a person’s. They stood in
a kind of crouch, but Bonnie could tell with one look that they were sinewy,
built for speed. For hunting. For killing.
Just at the moment though, they were
still.
“How did you do that?” one demanded.
It was looking with its good eye at the overhead light.
The other could say nothing,
although a foam of white slather bubbled around its mouth. Its long muzzle was
stuck deep into the plastic cup, and although its jaw muscles had tremendous
leverage going the other way, to crunch down,
they were not nearly as effective in opening up. It looked a little silly with
its nose in the cup, trying to snarl and bite at the plastic, but it was still
scary enough that Bonnie saw a shimmering grayness before her eyes.
Oh, no, no . . .
It was all over. She was . . .
She was going to faint.
“Take it off this way, idiot,” the
bleeding werewolf said and strode over to the other. He closed his front paw
around the cup and pulled. It took a little time since the cup had become
slippery with saliva from the first werewolf’s pawing.
Bonnie saw the people she loved pass
before the twinkling grayness that was her field of vision: her parents and her
sister Mary, and Meredith and Elena of course, and Caroline—sort of—and her
boyfriend Raymond, and Matt Honeycutt, who made such a cute quarterback with
his blond hair, and Stefan, that gorgeous new guy that Elena was trying to get,
and the boy who sat behind her this year in sociology . . .
“Too bright,” cried the werewolf who
had been released from the cup. “Who turned on the light?”
“Shut up,” growled the other one. It
had black claws instead of fingernails and now it tapped one of these against a
metal bookshelf to produce the sound Bonnie had heard before.
Tick.
Its face was horrendous because of
the wound that had cut one eye almost in half and covered it to the muzzle in
blood.
“Go ahead and look,” it said to
Bonnie in its deep slow guttural voice. “I’m already healing. You’ve done
nothing but make me angry, and I promise you that was a bad mistake. You are
going to die . . . slowly. You are going to beg
me for death before you die.”
“Yes, yes, it’s time to start games,”
said the other werewolf, sounding not quite sane in its bloodlust.
Although all of Bonnie’s instincts
told her running was useless, she turned to run.
And instantly was caught about the
waist and held immobile.
* * * * *
“Now, now,” Damon said and caught
the fleeing red-haired maiden as she started to dash beyond the bookcase where
he was standing, letting his own night-adjusted eyes get used to the light.
They were fine now, but it had taken a while. “There, there.”
He stepped out, still holding the
girl, and then he gave everyone all round a brilliant smile, which he
immediately turned off like a candle being doused with water. “Three may be a
crowd,” he said to the terrified, swooning girl in his arms, “but four is
enough for a round of bridge, yes?”
“You bloodsucking tick—” began the
guttural-voiced werewolf, as Damon slid the fainting girl carefully into a
chair. Head injuries could be dangerous and might interfere with her ability to
admire him.
“Now then, let me just train these
two for a minute,” Damon said to the girl, adding, “Bad dogs! No! Sit!” to the werewolves. He
then gracefully got behind the creatures before they could move and grabbed
each of them with one hand by the scruff of the neck. The next instant he was
dragging them out of the door, where he settled for one quick crunch at the
back of the neck for each. They turned back into their human forms after this,
and disreputable, lowlife humans at that. Their odor as humans was almost as
bad as their rank scent as werewolves, and that was saying a lot. Damon spat a
few times, wiped his mouth, and straightened and brushed his black cashmere
sweater before going back inside to see his maiden.
She was weakly trying to get up, her
eyes on the bloody steel ruler on the floor.
“Now, now. There, there. There, now,”
Damon said, preventing her. “You did some very nice work with that but you don’t
need it anymore. They’re in puppy heaven now. Well, puppy hell, more likely,
but you don’t need to worry about them, is the point.”
The maiden, who was exceptionally
dainty and pretty and had, to a vampire, the most exquisite feature of all, a
particularly long and delicate column of a neck, was looking up at him
soulfully. It was nice to see that she was short. Damon didn’t care that much
for tall girls because he wasn’t very tall himself. She also had—you couldn’t
help but notice—extraordinarily large eyes in her small heart-shaped face,
giving her the appearance of a kitten. They were clear brown eyes, with a dark
ring at the outer rim of the iris, then a very light brown ring, as if light
were shining through them in the middle, and then another dark ring around the
pupil. Her hair was the color of a strawberry and curled softly all over her
head in a way that made you think “pixie.”
Altogether, she was a lovely little
ornament, with fine blue veins in naturally translucent skin.
Damon smiled at her, not bothering
to hide elongated canines.
“Oooh,” the maiden gasped, taking
Damon in from dark, silky hair to neatly booted feet in one heart-rending
glance. “Oooooh. Gorgeous.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I meant: ooooh, you saved me!”
“Well, I helped,” Damon said with a
very deep and a very false sense of modesty.
“Ooooh, they were monsters.”
“Well, they’re no danger now,” Damon
said.
“Ooooooh, they were going to eat me!”
Damon wondered if he should moan
before speaking the way the girl did. Maybe it was some regional dialect thing.
He wanted to make her comfortable. “OOH!” he said, a bit more violently than he
meant to, and the girl jerked in his arms, her brown eyes becoming enormous. “Yes,
they were,” he agreed heartily.
“Oh, my God,” said the girl,
forgetting to “oooh” at all. “Who are you?
You wouldn’t take advantage of a helpless girl at a time like this, would you?”
she added, and shut her eyes, tilting her head back slightly, with the tiniest
puckering of her lips.
“Oh, well, perhaps only a little,”
Damon said jovially, eyeing the lovely lavender veins in her arched neck.
“Ooooooooh.”
Damon stood looking helplessly down
at the girl, noticing uncomfortably that she weighed almost nothing on his arm,
that her skin still had the luster of its first baby-glow, and that altogether
she seemed much more like a child than like a maiden at all.
He cleared his throat.
The brown eyes opened. They were not
only unusually large but rather wide apart, imparting a childlike look to the
owner.
“Yes?” she said, looking
disappointed, which did nothing for Damon’s canines.
“Ah,” he said. He tried to impart
some of the velvet of the night into his voice. “Hm. Do you know what those two
things that wanted to attack you were?”
“Oooooh, yes. The were oooooh werewolves!” She shuddered.
“So you get a lot of werewolves
around here?”
“Ooooooooooo-OOh! No!”
“Ah,” said Damon, who had jumped a
little himself at the end of this moan. “Well. They were definitely creatures
of the—”
“—ooooooh, night!”
“And, ah, do you know about any other creatures of the night?”
“Ooooh: werewolves and vampires and
witches and ghosts and demons and ghouls and ooooooh—”
Damon leaped at the strategic moan. “Okay,
take that, go back to the beginning and name the second.”
The brown eyes went wide and the
pupils dilated with fear, then the girl darted quick looks around the room and
toward the ceiling. “Wuh-witches?” she faltered. “I know one—knew one—that wasn’t
wicked at all. She was my grannie and she knew when she was going to die
because she sent me my birthday present a whole month early and the—”
“Stop!” said Damon. The girl had a
melodious voice and listening to her was no great trial—it was rather like
listening to a nightingale or a curlew, but he had to get his point across. “Witches
was third on the list, actually. There was something before it.”
“No,” the redhead said. “Werewolves
and witches and vamp—” She stopped, put a small, delicate-fingered hand over
her mouth. “Vam-pup-pires?” she finished, with a small gulp in the middle of
the word.
Damon felt instant relief. They had
got somewhere! He smiled again, brilliantly.
The strawberry-haired girl looked at
his smile. She looked at it very carefully. Damon was happy to have overcome
the linguistic challenges and held the smile for a long time, almost a whole
second.
Just as he turned the smile off, the
redhead stopped examining it. Damon knew when she did, precisely, for her
eyelashes fluttered in a manner her great- grandmother would have approved of,
her face became white as marble, and her body folded and went limp, sending her
curly strawberry head on a crash course with the wooden floor.
It would have taken superhuman
reflexes to catch her before her small frame hit the ground, headfirst, but
fortunately Damon had those. He snatched up the little red-haired songbird
almost the instant she began to fall, catching her around her tiny waist and .
. . once again they were back to square one, with him holding her, but this
time with the addition of her unconsciousness. He looked around for something
to put her on and was beginning to make use of a study table when her eyelashes
flickered again, she moaned softly, and then awoke.
“Oooh, thank God it’s just you—it’s you!” she exclaimed, going from
reassurance to terror in about a tenth of a second flat. She struggled feebly
to get out of his arms. Since her goal would have landed her on her backside on
the floor, Damon didn’t let her achieve it.
The redhead was also fumbling at her
long delicate neck—a ballerina’s neck, if he’d ever seen one—perfect for Swan Lake—”Am I . . . ? Did you already
. . .?” she implored.
“Never. I’d never take advantage of
a sleeping maiden.” Because I don’t care for cold, unreceptive flesh, Damon
thought. The warmth, the vibrant pleasure, as well as the life-force of an
exquisite treat like this were to be treasured, not squandered as she lay
unconscious.
The girl was panting in his arms now
like a wounded stag, with the hounds very near. “At least—you saved me—from
those monsters. They would have
tortured me.”
Looking at her, at the way she
clasped the tiny gold cross at her neck, at the way she looked up to a window
that was still lit only by moonlight, the way she held one hand toward it as if
to grasp an unreachable savior, Damon was bewildered. There was something . . .
unreal about the entire moment.
And then he realized that that was
exactly what it was. Unreality. She was setting up a tableau, a picture for the
canvas. One could even think of names for it easily: The Maiden and the
Vampire; or, more poetically, The Last Reach Toward Light. If only, he thought,
enthralled by what he saw in his mind’s eye, she had been wearing a billowing
white nightgown that was sliding off one lucent shoulder, and they had been
outside so she could reach for the moon itself. What a moment! What a portrait!
What a maiden!
The only problem was that she was
two or three years too young. Emotionally. Mentally.
Even, he realized, with her slimness
pressed against him so firmly, physically so.
He didn’t dine off children. And in
any case . . .
“Just what is it you’re imagining
that I’ll do?” he asked her wryly.
She shut her eyes and crossed her
hands over her breast. A born actress and a coquette if ever he’d seen one. “To
take—my blood,” she said in tones of heartbreaking humble acceptance.
“And just how much were you
imagining I’d need?”
“Ooooh . . . well, how much blood do
people have?” His maiden forgot to look like a virgin sacrifice and put a
knuckle to a dimple in one cheek, as if to grind it in deeper. “Heh,” she said
embarrassed, the mood broken, “I don’t know.”
“Well, I scarcely need a dram for
supper—a dram’s an old word for a small amount,” Damon said, feeling rather
that this particular maiden might need this explained to her. “But in any case,
I wouldn’t take it from you.”
“You wouldn’t!” the maiden exclaimed
indignantly, forgetting to “ooh” at all. “And why not, might I ask? Just
because Meredith and Caroline and Elena all have more—more . . .”—she was
tracing a sort of formless roundness with both hands as if squeezing ripe
peaches—”more on top, already? I’m getting
it, too! I turned seventeen two days
ago! If you’d seen me dressed properly, you’d know!”
Now the mood was completely ruined
for Damon. And yet he’d be—he’d be damned
if he’d let any other random
creature of darkness make a meal off her now that he’d saved her. Who knew how
many clans of werewolves there were around here? He—somehow—couldn’t just leave
her in the middle of the night, far from her home.
“Get your things together,” he said
crossly.
“Why?” the maiden snapped back,
tearfully defiant.
“Because I’m taking you home, you
silly little nitwit. What were you doing all alone in a great building like
this that no one lives in?”
“I was studying! I have a paper due!”
“Well, if it hadn’t been for me, you
would have been studying in the afterlife right now—and don’t you forget it.”
“Well, I don’t care!” the maiden—no,
the little girl said, beginning to
cry in earnest. “You don’t”—sob—”know my teacher”—sob—”for European History!”—sob—”He
laughs at me in front of everyone!”
“Those are the worst kind,” Damon
said, remembering his humiliations across the years at the hands of Signore
Lucca. “And always after you’ve been to a late party and your head is pounding.”
“Oh, you do understand,” the girl turned to him, still weeping, and put her
head on his shoulder.
“Did you say this man teaches
history? European history? What time frame are you looking at? And what
country?” Damon said, with a sudden tiny quirk of his mouth.
“England and Spain, around 1533—the
years before, the years after.”
“Well, what do you know?” Damon
said, once again flashing his most brilliant smile—the one that turned girls to
quivering puddles—around the room. “I believe I might just be able to help you
with that. You see I was around then—more or less—and what I didn’t see I heard
through gossip. I always say if it’s not worth gossiping about, it didn’t
happen in the first place.”
* * * * *
Dawn. Bonnie, more or less
sleepwalking, was being helped out of her Bug and a backpack was being pressed
into her arms.
“Now remember to be surprised when
they find two dead drifters at the back of the library.”
Bonnie shuddered and her eyes opened
brown and soulful. “You saved me from them. I’ll never forget.” She looked like a small red bird, with bedraggled
plumage standing straight up all over her head.
“Well—never mind about that,” Damon
said, once again attempting to look modest. “And remember to type up all the
bits I wrote, but not to wonder why you’re doing it. That’s imperative.” He sent out a surge of
Influence to impress this on the girl’s mind.
“Very
imperative,” Bonnie agreed in a mumble, and then they were at her front
door. “Thank you—oh, so much!” After
she spoke she went on tiptoe, shut her eyes and aimed pursed lips at
point-blank range.
There was a long pause and then the
lightest, warmest, moth’s brush of lips over hers. It was the sweetest kiss she’d
ever had—and the sexiest.
“Well, goodbye, then—little bird,” a
voice said and Bonnie opened her eyes to look long and deeply into fathomless
black pools, and then she was alone. Totally alone. For some reason she looked
around and confirmed it. There was her car, neatly parallel parked—wow! she was
getting a lot better at that—but she was alone and. . . and . . . well, of
course she was alone! She’d managed to pull it off—to study all night in the
Robert E. Lee library, and not a thing out of the ordinary had happened. She’d
even found a side door ajar to slip out of and so avoid a confrontation with
Ms. Kemp!
Now she couldn’t wait to tell Elena
and Meredith and Caroline about what she’d done, and how the report was almost
finished, all but some typing she’d do tonight. She’d done it all by
herself—even she could hardly believe it! Bonnie patted her backpack. But in
here was the proof. The Conscience of a
Queen was the best history paper she would ever write in her life, full of
strange little facts and curious quotes. It might even get her an A!
An A . . . that would be almost
supernatural.
Something deep down in the very back
of her mind told her to look behind her.
She did, but saw nothing but a
magnificent black crow flying from a branch into the dawning day. Poor thing,
it seemed to be shedding, though. Two black feathers fell to the ground as it
disappeared. Bonnie’s heart swelled up into her throat, almost as if she was
going to cry as she stared at those feathers, which were so black that they
shed rainbows in the breaking light, but then she braced herself. She really
didn’t know much about crows. Maybe it was something they all did. Anyway, this
one was gone.
* * * * *
Damon soared up and out, watching
the neighborhoods become a patchwork below him, and below that, to eyes attuned
to the Power, the ley lines that crossed and re-crossed here, luring in all
sorts of drek, from those disgusting werewolves to little brother Stefan.
The reason for Damon’s circling now
was simple: he was hungry. He hadn’t been able to tap the little red songbird’s
veins. She was just too young, too—innocent—to be punctured randomly like that.
And, damn it all, despite—ha!—having
spent a night with her, he had never asked her name. He would probably never
know it—no, wait! She’d written it on that first piece of paper, the title
page. The last name had been Scottish or Irish or something that he couldn’t
remember, but the first name he did.
Bonnie.
Sweet songbird Bonnie, thought
Damon, making a turn and circling the other way. His little Redbird.
What a pity that he’d never be
seeing her again.
The End
