Someone stopped to stare, and someone else came out of a shop, running. When the children who'd been trailing her litter surrounded her, wailing, a crowd of sorts gathered.
Apparently it was one thing to see a merchant beating his worn-out drab - the people around here must have seen that almost daily. But to see this beautiful new girl having her clothes slashed away, this girl with hair like golden silk under a veil of gold and white, and eyes that perhaps reminded some of them of a barely remembered blue sky - that was quite another thing. Moreover, the new girl was obviously a fresh barbarian slave who had clearly humiliated her master by tearing the lead ropes from his hands and was standing now with her sanctity veil made into a mockery.
Terrific street theater.
And even given all of that, the slave owner was preparing for another stroke, raising his arm high and preparing to put his back into it. A few people in the crowd gasped; others were muttering indignantly. Elena's new sense of hearing, turned up high, could catch their whispering. A girl like this wasn't meant for the slums at all; she must have been destined for the heart of the city. Her aura alone was enough to show that. In fact, with that golden hair and those vivid blue eyes, she might even be a Guardian from the Other Side. Who knew - ?
The lash that was raised never descended. Before it could, there was a flash of black lightning - pure Power - that sent half the crowd scattering. A vampire, young in appearance and dressed in the clothing of the upper world, Earth, had made his way to stand between the golden girl and the slave owner - or rather to loom over the now cringing slave owner. The few in the crowd not stirred by the girl immediately felt their hearts pulse at the sight of him. He was the girl's owner, surely, and now he would see to the situation.
At that instant, Bonnie and Meredith arrived on the scene. They were reclining on their litter, decorously draped in their veils, Meredith in starry midnight blue and Bonnie in soft pale green. They could have been an illustration for The Arabian Nights.
But the moment they saw Damon and Elena, they most indecorously jumped off the litter. By now the crowd was so thick that working their way to the front required using elbows and knees, but in only seconds they were at Elena's side, hands defiantly unbound or trailing rope that hung defiantly free, veils floating in the wind.
When they did arrive beside Elena, Meredith gasped. Bonnie's eyes opened wide and stayed that way. Elena understood what they were seeing. Blood was flowing freely from the cut across her cheekbone and her blouse kept opening in the wind to reveal her torn and bloody camisole. One leg of her jeans was rapidly turning red.
But, drawn up into the protection of her shadow, was a far more pitiful figure. And as Meredith raised Elena's diaphanous veil to help keep her blouse closed and once more enshroud her in decency, the woman herself raised her head, to look at the three girls with the eyes of a dumb and hunted animal.
Behind them, Damon said softly, "I shall quite enjoy this," as he lifted the heavy man into the air with one hand and then struck his throat like a cobra. There was a hideous scream, which went on and on.
No one tried to interfere, and no one tried to cheer the slave owner on to make a fight.
Elena, scanning the faces of the crowd, realized why. She and her friends had become used to Damon - or as used as you could become to his half-tamed air of ferocity. But these people were getting their first look at the young man dressed all in black, of medium height and slim build, who made up for his lack of bulging muscle with a supple and deadly grace. This was enhanced by the gift of somehow dominating all the space around him, so that he effortlessly became the focal point of any picture - the way a black panther might become the focal point if it were walking lazily down a crowded city street.
Even here, where menace and an aspect of outright evil were commonplace, this young man exuded a quality of danger that made people want to stay out of his line of sight, much less his way.
Meanwhile Elena and both Meredith and Bonnie were looking around for some sort of medical assistance, or even for something clean that would staunch wounds. After about a minute, they realized that it wasn't just going to appear, so Elena appealed to the crowd.
"Does anyone know a doctor? A healer?" she shouted. The audience merely watched her. They seemed loath to get involved with a girl who had obviously defied the black-clad demon now wringing the slave owner's neck.
"So you all think it's just fine," Elena shouted, hearing the loss of control, the disgust and fury in her own voice, "for a bastard like that to be whipping a starving pregnant woman?"
There were a few downcast eyes, a few scattered replies on the theme of "He was her master, wasn't he?" But one youngish man who had been leaning against a stopped wagon, straightened up. "Pregnant?" he repeated. "She doesn't look pregnant!"
"She is!"
"Well," the young man said slowly, "if that's true, he's only harming his own merchandise." He glanced nervously over to where Damon was now standing above the deceased slave owner, whose face was cast into a ghastly death grimace of agony.
This still left Elena with no help for a woman she was afraid was about to die. "Doesn't anyone know where I can find a doctor?" There were now mutterings in various tones from the crowd members.
"We might get further on if we could offer them some money," Meredith was saying. Elena immediately reached for her pendant, but Meredith was quicker, unfastening a fancy amethyst necklace from around her neck and holding it up. "This goes to whoever shows us a good doctor first."
There was a pause while everyone seemed to be assessing the reward and the risk. "Don't you have any star balls?" a wheezing voice asked, but a high, light voice cried, "That's good enough for me!"