meet. Elena bit her lip until she felt blood come, trying not to scream.
Be crushed, and die, and turn to loam,the tree said in Elena's ear.Your kind can feed my kin for once. The voice was ancient, malevolent and very, very frightening.
Elena's legs reacted without pausing to consult her mind. They pushed off hard and then the golden butterfly wings unfurled again, not beating but undulating, holding Elena steady above the altar.
She pulled the snarling vixen's muzzle up - not too close - to her own face. "Where are the two pieces of the fox key?" she demanded. "Tell me or I'll take off another tail. Iswear I will. Don't fool yourself - it's not just your pride that you're losing, is it? Your tails are your Power. What would it feel like to have none at all?"
"Like being a human - exceptyou , you freak." Now Misao was laughing again in her panting-dog way, her fox ears flat to her head.
"Just answer the question!"
"As if you would understand the answers I could give. If I told you that one was inside the silver nightingale's instrument, would that give you any kind of idea?"
"It might if you explained it a little more clearly!"
"If I told you that one was buried in Blodwedd's ballroom, would you be able to find it?" Again the panting grin as the fox gave clues that led nowhere - or everywhere.
"Are those your answers?"
"No!"Misao shrieked suddenly and kicked with her feet, as if they were dog's legs scrabbling in the dirt. Except that the dirt was Elena's midriff, and the scrabbling legs felt as if they might well puncture her entrails. She felt her camisole tear.
"I told you; I'm not playing around here!" Elena cried. She lifted the vixen with her left arm, even though it ached with tiredness. With her right hand, she positioned the shears.
"Where is the first part of the key?" Elena demanded.
"Search for yourself! You only have the whole world to look through, and every thicket besides." The fox went for her throat again, white teeth actually scoring Elena's flesh.
Elena forced that arm to hold Misao higher. "I warned you, so don't say that I didn't or that you have any reason to complain!"
She squeezed the shears.
Misao gave a squeal that was almost lost in the general commotion. Elena, feeling more and more tired, said, "You're a complete liar, aren't you? Look down if you want. I didn't cut anywhere close to you. You just heard the shears click and screamed."
Misao very nearly got a claw into Elena's eye. Oh, well. Now, for Elena, there were no more moral or ethical issues. She wasn't causing pain, she was simply draining Power. The shears wentsnap, snap, snap , and Misao screamed and cursed her, but below them the Tree-Men were shrinking.
"Where is the first part of the key?"
"Let me go and I'll tell." Suddenly Misao's voice was less shrill.
"On your honor - if you can say that without laughing?"
"On my honor and my word as a kitsune. Please! You can't leave a fox without a real tail! That's why the ones you cut didn't hurt. They're badges of honor. But my real tail is in the middle, it's tipped with white, and if you cut me there; you'll see blood and it will leave a stump." Misao seemed thoroughly cowed, thoroughly ready to cooperate.
Elena knew about judging people and intuition, and both her mind and her heart were telling her not to trust this creature. But she wanted so much to believe, to hope....
Making a slow curving descent so that the vixen was close to the ground - she would not give in to the temptation to drop her from sixty feet up - Elena said, "Well? On you honor, what are the answers?"
Six Tree-Men came to life around her and plunged at her, with greedy, grasping finger branches.
But Elena wasn't taken completely off guard. She hadn't let go of her grip on Misao; only slackened it. Now she tightened the grip again.
A wave of strength buoyed her so that she lifted fast and swept by the widow's walk and a furious Shinichi and weeping Caroline. Then Elena met Damon's eyes. They were filled with hot, fierce pride in her. She was filled with hot, fierce passion.
"I am not an angel," she announced to any of the group who hadn't quite managed to grasp this yet. "I am not an angel and I am not a spirit. I'm Elena Gilbert and I've been