Damon was standing slightly crouched with a huge piece of glass held in his hand like a sword and great black drops of blood were dripping from where he had - oh, God! Elena thought - he'd put out one of Bloddeuwedd's eyes!
"YOU WILL ALL DIE! ALL!"
Bloddeuwedd made a charge at a random vampire directly below her and Elena screamed as the vampire screamed. The black beak had caught him by one leg and was lifting him.
But Damon was running forward, jumping, slashing. With a scream of fury, Bloddeuwedd took to the sky again.
Now everyone understood the danger. Two other vampires rushed to take their comrade from Damon, and Elena was glad that her friends were not responsible for another life. She had too much on her hands already.
Damon, I'm leaving now. You can come with me or not. I've got the key.
Elena sent the words on the frequency that they were more or less alone on, and she sent it without dramatics. She had no room for drama left. She'd been stripped of everything except the need to get to Stefan.
This time, she knew Damon heard her.
At first, she thought Damon was dying. That Bloddeuwedd had somehow come back and pierced him through his entire body, as with a spear made of light. Then she realized that the feeling was rapture, and two tiny child hands reached out of the light and clung to hers, allowing her to pull a thin, ragged, but laughing child away free.
No chains, she thought dizzily. He's not even wearing slave bracelets.
"My brother!" he told her. "My little brother's going to live!"
"Well, that's a fine thing," Elena said shakily.
"He's going to live!" A tiny frown line appeared. "If you hurry! And take good care of him! And - "
Elena put two fingers over his lips, very gently. "You don't need to worry about anything like that. You just be happy."
The little boy laughed. "I will! I am!"
"Elena!"
Elena came out of - well, she supposed it was a daze, although it had been more real than many other things she'd experienced recently.
"Elena!" Damon was trying desperately to restrain himself. "Show me the key!"
Slowly, majestically, Elena lifted her hand.
Damon's shoulders tensed, for - something - went down.
"It's a ring," he said dully. The slow and majestic bit hadn't worked on him at all.
"That's what I thought at first. It's a key. I'm not asking you, or seeing if you agree with me; I'm telling you. It's a key. The light from its eyes points to Stefan."
"What light?"
"I'll show you later. Bonnie! Meredith! We're leaving."
"YOU'RE NOT IF I SAY YOU'RE NOT!"
"Watch out!" screamed Bonnie.
The owl was diving again. And again, at the last second, Damon gathered the three girls and leaped. The owl's beak struck not grass nor shards of glass but the marble steps. They cracked. There was a scream of pain and another, as Damon, nimble as a dancer, slashed at the giant bird's one good eye. He got in a cut right above it. Blood began to fill the eye.
Elena couldn't stand any more. Ever since starting out on this journey with Damon and Matt, she had been a vial filling with anger. Drop by drop, with each new outrage, that anger had filled and filled the vial. Now her rage was about to fill it to overflowing.
But then...what would happen?
She didn't want to know. She was afraid she wouldn't survive it.
What she did know was that she couldn't watch any more pain and blood and anguish right now. Damon genuinely enjoyed fighting. Good. Let him. She was going to Stefan if she had to walk the whole way.
Meredith and Bonnie were silent. They knew Elena in this mood. She wasn't fooling around. And neither of them wanted to be left behind.
It was exactly at that moment that the carriage came rumbling up to the base of the marble stairs.
Sage, who obviously knew something about human nature, demonic nature, vampiric nature, and various kinds of bestial nature, jumped out of the carriage with two swords drawn. He also whistled. In a moment a shadow - a small one - came streaking to him out of the sky.
Last, slowly, stretching each leg like a tiger, came Saber, who immediately pulled back his lips to show an amazing number of teeth.
Elena leaped toward the carriage, her eyes meeting Sage's. Help me, she thought desperately. And his eyes said just as plainly, Have no fear.
Blindly, she reached behind her with both hands. One small, fine-boned, lightly trembling hand was thrust into hers. One slim, cool hand, hard as a boy's but with long tapering fingers grabbed her other one.
There was no one here to trust. No one to say good-bye to, or leave messages of good-bye with. Elena scrambled into the carriage. She got into the backseat, the farthest from the front, to accommodate incoming humans and animals.
And in they did come, like an avalanche. She had dragged Bonnie with her, and Meredith had followed, so that when Saber leaped into his accustomed place he landed on three soft laps.
Sage hadn't wasted a moment. With Talon clamped on his left wrist, he left just enough room for Damon's final spring - and a spring it was. Cracked and broken, oozing black fluid, Bloddeuwedd's beak hit the end of the marble stairs where Damon had been standing.
"Directions!" shouted Sage, but only after the horses were heading at a gallop - somewhere, anywhere, away.
"Oh, please don't let her hurt the horses," Bonnie gasped.
"Oh, please don't let her split this roof like cardboard," said Meredith, somehow able to be wry even when her life was in danger.
"Directions, s'il vous plaît!" roared Sage.
"The prison, of course," panted Elena. She felt that it had been a long time since she had been able to get enough air.