a widow's walk around it, just like the roof of the boardinghouse. There was even a room just like Stefan's, Damon noted as he carried Elena up the stairs.
"We're going all the way up?" Elena sounded bewildered.
"All the way."
"And what are wedoing up here?" Elena asked, when he had her settled in a chair with a footstool and a light blanket on the roof.
Damon sat down on a rocker, rocking a little, his arms wrapped around one knee, his face tilted to the clouded sky.
He rocked once more, stopped, and turned to face her. "I suppose we're here," he said, in the light self-mocking tone that meant he was very serious, "so that I can tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Chapter 32
"Who is it?" a voice was saying from the forest darkness. "Who's out there?"
Bonnie had seldom been as grateful to anyone as she was to Matt for holding on to her. She needed people contact. If she could only bury herself deep enough in other people, she would be safe somehow. She just barely managed not to scream as the dimming flashlight swung onto a surrealistic scene.
"Isobel!"
Yes, it really was Isobel, not at the Ridgemont hospital at all, but here in the Old Wood. She was standing at bay, almost naked except for blood and mud. Right here, against this background, she looked like both prey and a sort of forest goddess, a goddess of vengeance, and of hunted things, and of punishment for any being who stood in her way. She was winded, breathing hard, with bubbles of saliva coming out of her mouth, but she wasn't broken. You only had to see her eyes, shining red, to see that.
Behind her, stepping on branches and letting loose the occasional grunt or curse, were two other figures, one tall and thin but bulbous on top, and one shorter and stouter. They looked like gnomes trying to follow a wood nymph.
"Dr. Alpert!"Meredith seemed just barely able to sound like her ordinary controlled self.
At the same time, Bonnie saw that Isobel's piercings were much worse. She'd lost most of her studs and hoops and needles, but there was blood and, already, pus, coming out of the holes where they had been.
"Don't scare her," Jim's voice whispered out of the shadows. "We've been tracking her since we had to stop." Bonnie could feel Matt, who had drawn in air to shout, suddenly choke it off. She could also see why Jim looked so top-heavy. He was carrying Obaasan, Japanese-style, on his back, with her arms around his neck. Like a backpack, Bonnie thought.
"What happened to you?" Meredith whispered. "We thought you'd gone to the hospital."
"Somehow, a tree fell across the road while we were letting you off, and we couldn't get around it to get to the hospital, or anywhere else. Not only that, but it was a tree with a hornet's nest or something inside it. Isobel woke up likethat " - the doctor snapped her fingers - "and when she heard the hornets she scrambled out and ran from them. We ran after her. I don't mind saying I would have done the same if I'd been alone."
"Did anybody see these hornets?" Matt asked, after a moment.
"No, it had just turned dark. But we heard them all right. Weirdest thing I ever heard. Sounded like hornet a foot long," Jim said.
Meredith was now squeezing Bonnie's arm from the other side. Whether to keep her silent or to encourage her to speak, Bonnie had no idea. And what could she say? "Fallen trees here only stay fallen until the policemake the decision to look for them?" "Oh, and watch out for the hellish streams of bugs as long as your arm?" "And by the way, there's probably one inside Isobel right now?"That would really freak Jim out.
"If I knew the way back to the boardinghouse, I would drop these three off there," Mrs. Flowers was saying. "They're not part of this."
To Bonnie's surprise, Dr. Alpert did not take exception to the statement that she herself was "not part of it." Nor did she ask what Mrs. Flowers was doing with the two teenagers out in the Old Wood at this hour. What she said was even more astonishing: "We saw the lights as you started shouting. It's right back there."
Bonnie felt Matt's muscles tighten up against her. "Thank God," he said. And then, slowly, "But that's not possible. I left the Dunstans' about ten