The litter was moving out of the bazaar into more slums, which Elena took in with darting quick glances on either side of her, hiding in her veil. They seemed like any earthly slums, barrios, or favella - only worse. Children, their hair turned red by the sun, crowded around Elena's litter, their hands held out in a gesture with universal meaning.
Elena felt a tearing at her insides that she had nothing of real value to give them. She wanted to build houses here, make sure these children had food and clean water, and education, and a future to look forward to. Since she had no idea how to give them any of these things, she watched them dash off with treasures such as her Juicy Fruit gum, her comb, her minibrush, her lip gloss, her water bottle, and her earrings.
Damon shook his head, but didn't stop her until she began fumbling with a lapis and diamond pendant Stefan had given her. She was crying as she tried to disengage the clasp when suddenly the last bit of the rope around her wrist came up short.
"No more," Damon said. "You don't understand anything. We haven't even entered the city proper yet. Why don't you have a look at the architecture instead of worrying about useless brats who're likely to die anyway?"
"That's cold," Elena said, but she couldn't think of any way to make him understand, and she was too angry with him to try.
Still, she stopped fumbling with the chain and looked beyond the slums as Damon had suggested. There she could see a breathtaking skyline, with buildings that seemed meant to last for eternity, made of stones that looked the way the Egyptian pyramids and Mayan ziggurats must have looked when they were new. Everything, though, was colored red and black by a sun now concealed by sullen crimson cloudbanks. That huge red sun - it gave the air a different look for different moods. At times it seemed almost romantic, glinting on a large river Elena and Damon passed, picking out a thousand tiny wavelets in the slow-moving water. At other times, it simply seemed alien and ominous, showing clearly on the horizon like a monstrous omen, tingeing the buildings, no matter how magnificent, the color of blood. When they turned away from it, as the litter bearers moved down into the city where the huge buildings were, Elena could see their own long and menacing black shadow thrown ahead of them.
"Well? What do you think?" Damon seemed to be trying to placate her.
"I still think it looks like Hell," Elena said slowly. "I'd hate to live here."
"Ah, but whoever said that we should live here, my Princess of Darkness? We'll go back home, where the night is velvet black and the moon shines down, making everything silver." Slowly, Damon traced one finger from her hand, up her arm to her shoulder. It sent an inner shiver through her.
She tried holding the veil up as a barrier against him, but it was too transparent. He still flashed that brilliant smile at her, dazzling through the diamond-dotted white - well, shell pink, of course, because of the light - that was on her side of the veil.
"Does this place have a moon?" she asked, trying to distract him. She was afraid - afraid of him - afraid of herself.
"Oh, yes: three or four of them, I think. But they're very small and of course the sun never goes down, so you can't see them as well. Not...romantic." He smiled at her, again, slowly this time, and Elena looked away.
And in looking, she saw something in front of her that captured her entire attention. In a side street a cart had overturned, spilling large rolls made out of fur and leather. There was a thin, hungry-looking old woman attached to the cart like a beast, who was lying on the ground, and a tall angry man standing over her, raining down blows with a whip on her unprotected body.
The woman's face was turned toward Elena. It was contorted in a grimace of anguish, as she tried ineffectually to roll into a ball, her hands over her stomach. She was na**d from the waist up, but as the whip lashed into her flesh, her body from throat to waist was being covered by a coating of blood.
Elena felt herself swelling with Wing Powers, but somehow none would come. She willed with all her circulating life-force for something - anything - to break free from her shoulders, but it was no good. Maybe it had something to do with wearing the remains of slave bracelets. Maybe it was Damon, beside her, telling her in a forceful voice not to get involved.
To Elena, his words were no more than punctuation to the heartbeat pounding in her ears. She jerked the rope sharply out of his hands, and then scrambled out of the litter. In six or seven leaps she was beside the man with the whip.
He was a vampire, his fangs elongated at the sight of the blood before him, but never stopping his frenzied lashing. He was too strong for Elena to handle, but...
With one more step Elena was straddling the woman, both her arms flung out in the universal gesture of protection and defiance. Rope dangled from one wrist.
The slave owner was not impressed. He was already launching the next whiplash, and it struck Elena across the cheek and simultaneously opened a great gap in her thin summer top, slicing through her camisole and scoring the flesh underneath. As she gasped, the tail of the whip cut through her jeans as if denim were butter.
Tears formed involuntarily in Elena's eyes, but she ignored them. She had managed not to make a sound other than that initial gasp. And she still stood exactly where she had first landed in protection. Elena could feel the wind whip at her tattered blouse, while her untouched veil waved behind her, as if to protect the poor slave who had collapsed against the ruined cart.
Elena was still desperately trying to bring out any kind of Wings. She wanted to fight with real weapons, and she had them, but she couldn't force them to save either her or the poor slave behind her. Even without them Elena knew one thing. That bastard in front of her wasn't going to touch his slave again, not unless he cut Elena into pieces first.