"You touch her, Salvatore, and you'd better make d.a.m.n sure you kill me, too!"

Elena's heart jerked as she heard Matt's voice sounding so strong and well. She'd found him at last, but she couldn't think of a way to save him.

"And then we have to decide what to do with them to start with," Misao said, clapping like a happy child at her birthday party.

"Take your pick." Shinichi caressed his sister's hair and whispered into her ear. She turned and kissed him on the mouth. Not hastily, either.

"What the-what's going on?" Caroline said. She had never been shy, that one, Elena thought. Now she had moved forward to cling to Shinichi's unoccupied hand.

For just an instant, Elena thought he would throw her off the widow's walk and watch her plunge to the ground. Then he turned, and he and Misao stared at each other.

Then he laughed.

"Sorry, sorry, it's so hard when you're the life of the party," he said. "Well, what do you think, Carolyn-Caroline?"

Caroline was staring at him. "Why's she holding you that way?"

"In theShi no Shi , sisters are precious," Shinichi said. "And...well, I haven't seen her in a long time. We're getting reacquainted."

But the kiss he planted on Misao's palm was hardly brotherly. "Go on," he added quickly, to Caroline. "You choose the first act in the Moonspire Festival! What shall we do with her?"

Caroline began to imitate Misao, kissing Shinichi's cheek and ear. "I'm new here," she said flirtatiously. "I don't really know what you want me to pick."

"Silly Caroline. Naturally, how she di-" Shinichi was suddenly smothered by a great hug and kiss from his sister.

Caroline, who had obviously wanted the attention of choice put to her, even if she didn't understand the subject, said huffily, "Well, if you don't tell me, I can't choose. And anyway, where's Elena? I don't see her anywhere!" She seemed about to say more when Damon glided over and whispered in her ear. Then she smiled again, and they both looked at the pine trees surrounding the boardinghouse.That was when Elena had her second qualm. But Misao was already speaking and that required Elena's full attention.

"Lucky! Then I'll pick." Misao leaned forward, peeking over the edge of the roof at the humans below, her dark eyes wide, summing up the possibilities in what looked like a barren clearing. She was so delicate, so graceful as she got up to pace and think; her skin was so fair, and her hair so glossy and dark that even Elena couldn't take her eyes off her.

Then Misao's face lit up and she spoke. "Spread her on the altar. You brought some of your half-breeds?"

The last was not so much a question as an excited exclamation.

"My experiments? Of course, darling. I told you so," Shinichi replied and added, staring into the forest, "Two of you-er, men- and Old Faithful!" And he snapped his fingers. There were several minutes of confusion during which the humans around Bonnie were struck, kicked, thrown to the ground, trampled on, and crushed as they fought with the shadows. And then the things that had shambled forward before, shambled farther forward with Bonnie held in between them, dangling limply from each by a slim arm.

The half-breeds were something like men and something like trees with all the leaves stripped off them. If they had beenmade , it looked as if they had been made specifically to be grotesque and asymmetrical. One had a crooked, k.n.o.bby left arm that reached almost to its feet, and a right arm that was thick, lumpy, and only waist-high.

They were hideous. Their skin was similar to the chitin-like skin of the insects, but much b.u.mpier, with knotholes and burls and all the outward aspects of bark on their branches. They had a s.h.a.ggy, unfinished look in places.

They were terrifying. The way their limbs were twisted; the way they walked, shambling forward like apes, the way their bodies ended on top with treelike caricatures of human faces, surmounted by a tangle of thinner branches sticking out at odd angles-they were calculated to look like creatures of nightmare.

And they were naked. They had nothing in place of clothes to disguise the ghastly deformities of their bodies.

And then Elena really knew what terror meant, as the two shambling malach carried the limp Bonnie to a sort of roughly hewn stump of tree like an altar, laid her on it and began to pluck at the many layers of her clothing, clumsily, pulling at them with sticklike fingers that broke off with little crackling sounds even as cloth tore. They didn't seem to care that they broke their fingers off-as long as they accomplished their task.

And then they were using bits of torn cloth, even more clumsily, to tie Bonnie, spread-eagled, to four k.n.o.bby posts snapped off their own bodies and hammered into the ground around the trunk with four powerful blows by the thick-armed one.

Meanwhile, from somewhere even farther away in the shadows, a third man-tree shuffled forward. And Elena saw that this one was, undeniably, unmistakably male.

For a moment Elena worried that Damon might lose it, go mad, turn around and attack both the were-foxes, revealing his true allegiance now. But his feelings about Bonnie had obviously changed since he had saved her at Caroline's. He appeared perfectly relaxed beside Shinichi and Misao, sitting back and smiling, even saying something that made them laugh.

Suddenly something inside Elena seemed to plummet. This wasn't a qualm. It was full-blown terror. Damon had never looked so natural, so in tune, sohappy with anyone as he did here with Shinichi and Misao. They couldn't possibly have changed him, she tried to convince herself. Theycouldn't have possessed him again so quickly, not without her, Elena, knowing it....

But when you showed him the truth, he was miserable, her heart whispered. Desperately miserable-miserably desperate. He might have reached for possession as a defiant alcoholic reaches for a bottle, wanting only forgetfulness. If she knew Damon, he had willingly invited the darkness back in.

He couldn't stand to stand in the light, she thought. And so now, he's able to laugh even at Bonnie's suffering.

And where did that leave her? With Damon defected to the other side, no longer ally, but enemy? Elena began to tremble with anger and hatred-yes, and fear, too, as she contemplated her position.

All alone to struggle against three of the strongest enemies she could imagine, and their army of deformed, conscienceless killers?

Not to mention Caroline, the cheerleader of spite?

As if to corroborate her fears, as if to show her how slim her chances really were, the tree she was clinging to seemed suddenly to let go of her, and for a moment Elena thought she would fall, spinning and screaming, all the way to the ground. Her handholds and footholds seemed to disappear all at once, and she only saved herself by a frantic-and painful-scrambling through serrated pine needles up to the grooved, dark bark.

You are a human girl now, my dear,the strong, resinous smell seemed to be telling her.And you are up to your neck in the Powers of the undead and of sorcery. Why fight it? You've lost before you've begun. Give in now and it won't hurt so much.

If aperson had been telling her this, trying to hammer it in, the words might have sparked some kind of defiance from the flint of Elena's character. But instead this was just a feeling that came over her, an aura of doom, a knowledge of the hopelessness of her cause, and the inadequacy of her weapons, that seemed to settle over her as gently and as inescapably as a fog.

She leaned her throbbing head against the trunk of the tree. She had never felt so weak, so helpless-or so alone, not since she had been a newly wakened vampire. She wanted Stefan. But Stefan hadn't been able to beat these three, and because of that she might never see him again.

Something new was happening on the roof, she realized wearily. Damon was looking down at Bonnie on the altar, and his expression was petulant. Bonnie's white face was staring up at the evening sky in determination, as if refusing any longer to weep or beg again.

"But...are all thehors d'oeuvres so predictable?" Damon asked, seeming genuinely bored.

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you'd turn on your best friend for amus.e.m.e.nt, Elena thought. Well, just you wait. But she knew the truth was that without him, she couldn't even put together Plan A, much less fight against these kitsune, these were-foxes.

"You told me that in theShi no Shi , I would see acts of genuine originality," Damon was going on. "Maidens hypnotized to cut themselves..."

Elena ignored his words. She concentrated all her energy on the thudding pain in the center of her chest. She felt as if she were drawing blood from her tiniest capillaries, from the far reaches of her body, and collecting it here at her center.

The human mind is infinite, she thought. It is as strange and as infinite as the universe. And the human soul...

The three youngest of the possessed began dancing around the spread-eagled Bonnie, singing in falsely sweet little-girl voices: "You are going todie in here, When you die inhere , outthere They throwdirt right on your face!"

How delightful, Elena thought. Then she tuned back in to the drama unfolding on the roof. What she saw startled her. Meredith was now up on the widow's walk, moving as if she were underwater-entranced. Elena had missed how she'd gotten there-was it by some sort of magic? Misao was facing Meredith, giggling. Damon was laughing, too, but in mocking disbelief.

"And you expect me to believe that if I givethis girl a pair of scissors..." he said, "she would actually cut her own-"

"Try and see for yourself," Shinichi interrupted, with one of his languid gestures. He was leaning against the cupola in the middle of the widow's walk, still trying to out-lounge Damon. "Didn't you see our prizewinner, Isobel?You carried her all the way here- didn't she ever try to speak?"

Damon held out a hand. "Scissors," he said, and a dainty pair of nail scissors rested in his palm. It seemed that, as long as Damon had Shinichi's magic key, the magic field around them would continue to obey him even in the real world. He laughed. "No, adult- size scissors, for gardening. The tongue's made of strong muscles, not paper."

What he held in his hand then were large pruning shears-definitely not toys for children. He hefted them, feeling their weight. And then, to Elena's utter shock, he looked straight up at her in her treetop refuge, not needing to search for her there at all-and winked.

Elena could only stare back in horror.

He knew, she thought. He knew where I was all the time.

That was what he had been whispering to Caroline about.

It hadn't worked-theWings of Redemption hadn't worked, Elena thought, and it felt as if she were falling and would fall forever. I should have realized it would be no good. No matter what's done to him, Damon will always be Damon. And now he's offering me a choice: see my two best friends tortured and killed, or step forward and stop this horror by agreeing to his terms.

What could she do?

He had arranged the chess pieces brilliantly, she thought. The p.a.w.ns on two different levels, so that even if Elena could somehow climb down to try to save Bonnie, Meredith would be lost. Bonnie was tied to four strong posts and guarded by Tree-Men.

Meredith was closer, up on the roof, but to get her off Elena would have toget to her and then through Misao, Shinichi, Caroline, and Damon himself.

And Elena had to choose. Whether to step forward now, or be pushed forward by the anguish of one of the two who were almost a part of her.

She seemed to catch a faint strain of telepathy as Damon stood beaming there, and it said,This is the best night of my life.

You could always just jump,came the fog-like hypnotic whisper of annihilation once again.End the dead-end road you're on. End your suffering. End all the pain...just like that.

"Now it's my turn," Caroline was saying, brushing past the twins to face Meredith herself. "It was supposed to be my choice in the first place. So it's my turn now."

Misao was laughing hysterically, but Meredith was already stepping forward, still in a trance.

"Oh, have it your own way," Damon said. But he didn't move, still staring curiously, as Caroline said to Meredith, "You've always had a tongue like an adder's. Why don't you make it forked for us-right here, right now? Before you cut it into pieces."

Meredith held out her hand without a word, like an automaton.

Still with her eyes on Damon, Elena breathed in slowly. Her chest seemed to be going into spasms as it had when the sucker plants had wound their way around her and cut off her breath. But not even sensations in her own body could stop her.

How could I choose? she thought. Bonnie and Meredith-I love both of them.

And there's nothing else to do, she realized numbly, the feeling draining from her hands and her lips. I'm not even sure if Damon can save both of them, even if I agree to...submit to him. These others-Shinichi, Misao, even Caroline-they want to see blood. And Shinichi not only controls trees, but just about everything in the Old Wood, including those monstrous Tree-Men. Maybe this time Damon has over-reached himself, taken on more than he could handle. He wanted me-but he went too far to get me. I can't see any way out.

And then she did see. Suddenly everything fell into place and was brilliantly clear.

Sheknew .

Elena stared down at Bonnie, almost in a state of shock. Bonnie was looking at her, too. But there was no expectation of rescue in that small, triangular face. Bonnie had already accepted her fate: agony and death.

No,Elena thought, not knowing whether Bonnie could hear her.

Believe,she thought to Bonnie.

Not blindly, never blindly. But believe in what your mind tells you is the truth, and what your heart tells you is the right path. I would never let you go-or Meredith either.

I believe,Elena thought, and her soul was rocked by the force of it. She felt a sudden surge within herself, and she knew that it was time to go. One word was ringing in her mind as she stood and let go of her handholds on the tree trunk. And that one word echoed in her mind as she dove headfirst from her sixty-foot perch in the tree.

Believe.

37.

As she fell, it all rushed through her mind.

The first time she had seen Stefan...she had been a different person then. Ice-cold outside, manic inside-or was it the other way around? Still numb from the death of her parents so long ago. Jaded by the world and by anything to do with boys...A princess in an icy tower...with a l.u.s.t only for conquest, for power...until she'd seenhim .

Believe.

Then the world of the vampires...and Damon. And all the wicked wildness she'd found inside herself, all the pa.s.sion. Stefan was her lynchpin, but Damon was the fiery breath beneath her wings. However far she went, Damon seemed to lure her on just a little farther. And she knew that one day it would be too far...for both of them. But for now, all she had to do was simple.

Believe.

And Meredith, and Bonnie, and Matt. She had changed relations with them, oh, most definitely. At first, not knowing what she had done to deserve friends like these three, she hadn't even bothered to treat them as they deserved. Yet they had all stuck by her.

And now shedid know how to appreciate them-knew that if it came to that, she would die for them.

Below, Bonnie's eyes had followed her dive. The audience on the widow's walk looked, too, but it was Bonnie's face that she stared into: Bonnie startled and terrified and disbelieving and about to scream and realizing at the same time that no screaming would save Elena from a headlong dive to her death.

Bonnie, believe in me. I'll save you.

I remember how to fly.

38.

Bonnie knew that she was going to die.

She had had a clear premonition of it just before thosethings -the trees that moved like humans, with their hideous faces and their thick, knotted arms-had surrounded the little band of humans in the Old Wood. She had heard the howl of the black weir dog, turned, and just caught a glimpse of one vanishing in the glare of her flashlight. The dogs had a long history in Bonnie's family: when one of them howled, a death was soon to come.

She'd guessed then that it would be hers.

But she hadn't said anything, even when Dr. Alpert had said, "What in the name ofheaven wasthat ?" Bonnie was practicing being brave. Meredith and Matt were brave. It was something built into them, an ability to keep going when any sane person would run away and hide. They both putthe group's good ahead of their own. And of course Dr. Alpert was brave, not to mention strong, and Mrs. Flowers seemed to have decided that the teenagers were her own special charges to take care of.

Bonnie had wanted to show that she could be brave, too. She was practicing holding her head up and listening for things in the bushes, while simultaneously listening with her psychic senses for any sign of Elena. It was hard to juggle the two kinds of hearing.

There was a lot to hear with her real ears; all kinds of quiet chucklings and whisperings from the bushes that didn't belong there. But from Elena there wasn't a sound, not even when Bonnie called her name over and over:Elena, Elena, Elena!

She's human again, Bonnie had realized sadly, at last. She can't hear me or make contact. Out of all of us, she's the only one who didn't miraculously escape.

And it was then that the first of the Tree-Men loomed up in front of the group of searchers. Like something out of a nursery-tale nightmare, it was a tree and then-suddenly-it was athing , a treelike giant that suddenly moved swiftly toward them, its upper branches bunching together to become long arms, and then everyone was screaming and trying to get away from it.