She couldn't help but shiver. The last time she had felt an inner trembling was from Damon's warm hand on her bare back as they danced. Now, she felt something much icier, just a draft of cold air perhaps. But it drew her mind to the feeling of her own blood running down her sides.
Suddenly Bonnie and Meredith were there beside her, forming a barricade between her and the increasingly curious and excited crowd.
"Elena, what's happened? They said a barbarian human girl was to be whipped - " began Meredith.
"And you just knew it had to be me," completed Elena. "Well, it's true. I don't see how I can get out of it."
"But what have you done?" Bonnie asked frantically.
"Been an idiot. Let some fraternity-type vampire boys think that it was a sort of magic act," Damon put in. His face was still grim.
"That's a little unfair, isn't it?" Meredith asked. "Elena told us about the first time. It sounded as if they jumped to the conclusion that it was an act all by themselves."
"We should have denied it then. Now, we're stuck with it," Damon said flatly. Then, as if he were making an effort, "Oh, well, maybe we'll get what we came for, anyway."
"That was how we found out - some idiot came running down the steps yelling about an amulet with two green stones."
"It was all we could think of," Elena explained wearily. "It's worth it for Damon and I to do this if only we can find the other half of the key."
"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.
Chapter 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.