things were reaching out, fibrous tendrils were grabbing at her ankle just where it hurt most. And then it was agony to try to rip with her fingers at these thick, sap-coated, stinging roots.

I'm frightened, she thought, putting into words at last what all her feelings had been since she stepped into the darkness of the Old Wood. She was damp with dew and sweat, her hair was as wet as if she'd been standing in the rain. It was so dark! And now her imagination began to work, and unlike most people's imaginations it had genuine, solid information to workwith . A vampire's hand seemed to tangle in her hair. After an endless time of agony in her ankle and her shoulder, she had twisted the "hand" out of her hair-to find another curling stalk.

All right. She would ignore the pain and get her bearings here, here where there was a remarkable tree, a ma.s.sive white pine that had a huge hole in its center, big enough for Bonnie to get into. She would put that flat at her back and then walk straight west-she couldn't see stars because of the cloud cover, but shefelt that west was to her left. If she were correct, it would bring her to the road. If she were wrong and it was north, it would take her to the Dunstans'. If it were south, it would eventually take her to another curve of the road. If it were east...well, it would be a long walk, but it would eventually take her to the creek.

But first she would gather all her Power, all the Power she'd been unconsciously using to dull the pain and give her strength-she would gather it and light up this place so she could see if the road was visible-or, better, a house-from where she stood. It was only a human's power but, again, the knowledge of how to use it made all the difference, she thought. She gathered the Power in one tight white ball and then loosed it, twisting to look around before it dissipated.

Trees. Trees. Trees.

Oaks and hickories, white pine and beech. No high ground to get to. In every direction, nothing but trees, as if she were lost in some grimly enchanted forest and could never get out.

But shewould get out. Any of those directions would take her to people eventually-even east. Even east, she could just follow the stream until it led to people.

She wished she had a compa.s.s.

She wished she could see the stars.She was trembling all over, and it wasn't just from the cold. She was injured; she was terrified. But she had to forget about that.

Meredith wouldn't cry. Meredith wouldn't be terrified. Meredith would find a sensible way to get out.

She had to get help for Matt.

Gritting her teeth to ignore the pain, Elena started off. If any of her wounds had happened to her in isolation, she would have made a big fuss about it, sobbing and writhing over the injury. But with so many different pains, it had all melted into one terrible agony.

Be careful now. Make sure you're going straight and not tilting off at an angle. Pick your next target in your straight line of sight.

The problem was that by now it was too dark to see much of anything. She could just make out deeply grooved bark straight ahead. A red oak probably. All right, go to it. Hop-oh, it hurts-hop-the tears washing down her cheeks-hop-just a little farther-hop-you can make it-hop. She put her hand out on s.h.a.ggy bark. All right. Now, look straight in front of you. Ah.

Something gray and rough and ma.s.sive ahead-maybe a white oak. Hop to it-agony-hop-somebody help me-hop-how long will it take?-hop-not that far now-hop.There. She put her hand on the wide rough bark.

And then she did it again.

And again.

And again. And again. And again.

"What is it?" Damon demanded. He'd been forced to let Shinichi lead once they were out of the car again, but he still kept the kekkai loosely around him and he still watched every move the fox made. He didn't trust him as far as-well, the fact was, he didn't trust him at all. "What's behind the barrier?" he said again, more roughly, tightening the noose around the kitsune's neck.

"Our little cabin-Misao's and mine."

"And it wouldn't possibly be a trap, would it?"

"If you think so, fine! I'll go in alone...." Shinichi had finally changed into a half-fox, half-human form: black hair to his waist, with ruby-colored flames licking up from the ends, one silky tail with the same coloration behind him waving behind him, and two silky, crimson-tipped twitching ears on top of his head.

Damon approved aesthetically, but more important, he now had a ready-made handle. He caught Shinichi by the tail and twisted.

"Stop that!"

"I'll stop it when I get Elena-unless you waylaid her deliberately. If she's hurt, I'm going to take whoever harmed her and cut him into slivers. His life is forfeit."

"No matter who it was?"

"No matter who."

Shinichi was quivering slightly.

"Are you cold?"

"...just...admiring your resolve." More inadvertent quivering. Almost shaking his entire body.Laughter?

"At Elena's discretion, I would keep them alive. But in agony." Damon twisted the tail harder. "Move!" Shinichi took another step and a charming country cabin came into view, with a gravel path leading up between wild creepers that loaded the porch and hung down like pendants.

It was exquisite.

Even as the pain grew, Elena began to have hope. No matter how turned around she was, shehad to come out of the forest at some point. She had to make it. The ground was solid-no sign of mushiness or slanting downward. She wasn't headed for the creek.

She was headed for the road. She could tell.

She fixed her sights on a distant, smooth-barked tree. Then she hopped to it, the pain almost forgotten in her new feeling of certainty.

She fell against the ma.s.sive, peeling, ash-gray tree. She was resting against it when something bothered her. Her dangling leg. Why wasn't it b.u.mping painfully against the trunk? It had knocked continually against all the other trees when she turned to rest. She pulled back from the tree, and, as if she knew it were important, gathered all her Power and let it go in a burst of white light.

The tree with the huge hole in it, the tree she had started from, was in front of her.

For a moment Elena stood completely still, wasting Power, holding the light. Maybe it was some different...

No. She was on the other side of the tree, but it was the same one. That washer hair caught in the peeling gray bark. That dried blood washer handprint. Below it was where her b.l.o.o.d.y leg had left a mark-fresh.

She'd walked straight out and come straight back to this tree.

"Noooooooooooooo!"

It was the first vocalized sound she'd made since she'd fallen out of the Ferrari. She'd endured all that pain in silence, with little gasps or sharp breaths, but she'd never cursed and screamed. Now she wanted to do both.

Maybe it wasn't the same tree- Nooooooo, nooooooo, noooooooooooo!

Maybe her Power would come back and she'd see that she'd only hallucinated- No, no, no, no, no, no!

It just wasn't possible- Nooooooo!

Her crutch slipped from under her arm. It had dug into her armpit so deeply that the pain there rivaled the other pains. Everything hurt. But worst was her mind. She had a picture in her mind of a sphere like the Christmas snow globes you shook to make snow or glitter fall through liquid. But this sphere had trees all over the inside. From top to bottom, side to side, all trees, all pointing toward the middle. And herself, wandering inside this lonely sphere...no matter where she went, she'd find more trees, because that was all there were in this world she'd stumbled into.

It was a nightmare, but something like it was real.

The trees were intelligent, too, she realized. The little creeping vines, the vegetation; even now it was pulling her crutch away from her. The crutch was moving as if being pa.s.sed from hand to hand by very small people. She reached out and just barely grabbed the end of it.She didn't remember having fallen to the ground, but here she was. And there was a smell, a sweet, earthy, resinous aroma. And here were creepers, testing her, tasting her. With delicate little touches, they wound into her hair so that she couldn't pick her head up. Then she could feel them tasting her body, her shoulder, her b.l.o.o.d.y knee. Nothing about it mattered.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her body heaving with sobs. The creepers were pulling at her wounded leg now, and instinctively she jerked away. For a moment the pain woke her up and she thought,I've got to get to Matt , but the next moment that thought was dulled, too. The sweet, resinous smell remained. The creepers felt their way across her moving chest, across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They encircled her stomach.

And then they began to tighten.

By the time Elena realized the danger, they were restricting her breathing. She couldn't expand her chest. As she let out her breath, they only tightened again, working together: all the little creepers like one giant anaconda.

She couldn't tear them away. They were tough and springy and her nails couldn't cut through them. Working her fingers under a handful, she pulled as hard as she could, sc.r.a.ping with her nails and twisting. Finally one fiber sprang loose with the sound of a harp's string breaking and a wild whipping in the air.

The rest of the creepers pulled tighter.

She was having to fight to get air now, fight not to contract her chest. Creepers were delicately touching her lips, swaying over her face like so many thin cobras, then suddenly striking and going taut around her cheek and head.

I'm going to die.

She felt a deep regret. She had been given the chance of a second lifetime-a third, if you counted her life as a vampire-and she hadn't done anything with it. Nothing but pursue her own pleasure. And now Fell's Church was in peril and Matt was in immediate danger, and not only was she not going to help them, she was going to give up and die right here.

What would be the right thing to do? The spiritual thing? Cooperate with evil now, and hope she'd have the chance to destroy it later? Maybe. Maybe all she needed to do was to ask for help.

The feeling of breathlessness was leaving her light-headed. She would never have believed it of Damon, that he would put her through all this, that he would allow her to be killed. Just days ago she had been defending him to Stefan.

Damon and the malach. Maybe she was his offering to them. They certainly demanded a lot.

Or maybe it was just that he wanted her to beg for help. He might be waiting in the darkness quite close, his mind centered on hers, waiting for a whisperedplease .

She tried to spark the last of her Power. It was almost depleted, but like a match, with repeated striking she managed to get a tiny white flame.

Now she visualized the flame going into her forehead. Into her head. Inside. There.

Now.

Through the fiery agony of not being able to draw a breath, she thought:Bonnie. Bonnie. Hear me.

No answer-but she wouldn't hear one.

Bonnie, Matt is in a clearing in a lane off the Old Wood. He may need blood or some other help. Look for him. In my car.

Don't worry about me. It's too late for me. Find Matt. And that's all I can say, Elena thought wearily. She had a vague, sad intuition that she hadn't gotten Bonnie to hear her. Her lungs were exploding. This was a terrible way to die. She was going to be able to exhale one more time, and then there would be no more air....

d.a.m.n you, Damon, she thought, and then she concentrated all her thoughts, all her mind's reach on memories of Stefan. On the feeling of being held by Stefan, on Stefan's sudden leaping smile, on Stefan's touch.

Green eyes, leaf green, a color like a leaf held up to sunlight...

The decency he had somehow managed to retain, untainted...

Stefan...I love you....

I'll always love you....

I've loved you....

I love...

28.

Matt had no idea what time it was, but it was deep dusk under the trees. He was lying sideways in Elena's new car, as if he'd been tossed in and forgotten. His entire body was in pain.

This time he awoke and immediately thought, Elena. But he couldn't see the white of her camisole anywhere, and when he called, first softly, then shouting, he got no answer.

So now he was feeling his way around the clearing, on hands and knees. Damon seemed to have gone and that gave him a spark of hope and courage that lit up his mind like a beacon. He found the discarded Pendleton shirt-considerably trampled. But when he couldn't find another soft warm body in the clearing, his heart crashed down somewhere around his boots.

And then he remembered the Jaguar. He fumbled frantically in one pocket for the keys, came up empty, and finally discovered, inexplicably, that they were in the ignition.

He lived through the agonizing moment when the car wouldn't start, and then was shocked to see the brightness of its headlights. He puzzled briefly about how to turn the car while making sure he wasn't running a limp Elena over, then dug through the glove compartment box, flinging out manuals and pairs of sungla.s.ses. Ah, and one lapis lazuli ring. Someone was keeping a spare here, just in case. He put it on; it fit well enough.

At last his fingers closed over a flashlight, and he was free to search the clearing as thoroughly as he wanted to.

No Elena.

No Ferrari either.

Damon had taken her somewhere.

All right, then, he would track them. To do that he had to leave Elena's car behind, but he had already seen what these monsters could do to cars, so that wasn't saying much.

He would have to be careful with the flashlight, too. Who knew how much charge the batteries had left?

For the h.e.l.l of it, he tried calling Bonnie's mobile phone, and then her home phone, and then the boardinghouse. No signal, even though according to the phone itself, there should have been. No need to question why, either-this was the Old Wood, messing with things as usual. He didn't even ask himself why it was Bonnie's number he called first, when Meredith would probably be more sensible.

He found the tracks of the Ferrari easily. Damon had sped out of here like a bat...Matt smiled grimly as he finished the sentence in his mind.

And then he'd driven as if to get out of the Old Wood. This was easy, it was clear that either Damon had been going too fast for proper control or that Elena had been fighting, because in a number of places, mainly around corners, the tire tracks showed up clearly against the soft ground beside the road.

Matt was especially careful not to step on anything that might be a clue. He might have to backtrack at some point. He was careful, too, to ignore the quiet noises of the night around him. He knew the malach were out there, but he refused to let himself think about them.

And he never even asked himself why he was doing this, deliberately going into danger instead of retreating from it, instead of trying to drive the Jaguar out of the Old Wood. After all, Stefan hadn't lefthim as bodyguard.

But then you couldn't trust anything that Damon might say, he thought.

And besides-well, he'd always kept one eye out for Elena, even before their first date. He might be clumsy, slow, and weak in comparison to their enemies now, but he would always try.

It was pitch-dark now. The last remnants of twilight had left the sky, and if Matt looked up he could see clouds and stars-with trees leaning in ominously from either side.

He was getting toward the end of the road. The Dunstans' house should be coming up on the right pretty soon. He'd ask them if they'd seen- Blood.