previously invisible malach to come up the trees. They slunk up and slid up the back of Damon's neck. And then, hideously, they slipped inside him, one by one, through some cut he hadn't known he had. The feeling of their soft, flabby, jellyfish-like bodies was almost unbearable...slipping inside of him....
Shinichi sang softly.
"Oh, come a' tae me, ye fair pretty maidens
Haste ye lassies tae my bosom
Come tae me by sunlight or moonlight
While the roses still are in blossom..."
In his dream, Damon was angry. Not because of the nonsense about malach inside him. That was ludicrous. He was angry because he knew that the dream-Shinichi was watching Elena as she began to pack up the remains of the picnic. He was watching every motion she made with an obsessive closeness.
"They blossom ever where you tread
...Wild roses bloody red."
"Extraordinary girl, your Elena," the dream-Shinichi added. "If she lives, I think she'll be mine for a night or so." He stroked the remaining strands of hair off Damon's forehead gently. "Extraordinary aura, don't you think? I'll make sure her death is beautiful."
But Damon was in one of those dreams where you can neither move nor speak. He didn't answer.
Meanwhile, dream-Shinichi's dream-pets continued to climb the trees and pour themselves, like Jell-O, inside him. One, two, three, a dozen, two dozen of them.More .
And Damon could not wake, even though he sensed more malach coming from the Old Wood. They were neither dead, nor living, neither man nor maiden, mere capsules of Power that would allow Shinichi to control Damon's mind from far away. Endlessly, they came.
Shinichi kept watching the flow, the bright sparkle of internal organs sparkling into Damon. After a while he sang again,
"Days are precious, dinna lose them
Flo'ers will fade and so will ye...
Come to me, ye fair young maidens
While young and fair ye still may be."
Damon dreamed that he heard the word "forget" as if whispered by a hundred voices. And even as he tried to remember what to forget, it dissolved and disappeared.
He woke up alone in the tree, with an ache that filled his entire body.
Chapter 16
Stefan was surprised to find Mrs. Flowers waiting for them when they returned from their picnic. And, also unusually, she had something to say that didn't involve her gardens.
"There is a message for you upstairs," she said, jerking her head toward the narrow staircase. "It came from a dark young fellow - he looked somewhat like you. He wouldn't leave a word with me. Just asked where to leave a message."
"Dark fellow? Damon?" Elena asked.
Stefan shook his head. "What would he want to be leaving me messages for?"
He left Elena with Mrs. Flowers and hastened up the crazy, zigzagging stairs. At the top he found a piece of paper stuffed under the door.
It was a Thinking of You card, sans envelope. Stefan, who knew his brother, doubted that it had been paid for - with money, at least. Inside, in heavy black felt-tipped pen, were the words:
DON'T NEED THIS.
THOUGHT ST. STEFAN MIGHT.
MEET ME TONIGHT AT THE TREE
WHERE THE HUMANS CRASHED.
NO LATER THAN 4:30A.M .
I'LL GIVE YOU THE SCOOP.
D.
That was all...except for a Web address.
Stefan was about to throw the note in the wastebasket when curiosity assailed him. He turned on the
computer, directed it to the proper website, and watched. For a while, nothing happened. Then very dark gray letters on a black screen appeared. To a human, it would have appeared to be a completely blank screen. To vampires, with their higher visual acuity, the gray on black was faint but clear.
Tired of that lapis lazuli?
Want to take a vacation in Hawaii?
Sick of that same old liquid cuisine?
Come and visit Shi no Shi.
Stefan started to close the page, but something stopped him. He sat and stared at the inconspicuous little ad beneath the poem until he heard Elena at the door. He quickly closed the computer and went to take the picnic basket from her. He said nothing about the note or what he'd seen on the computer screen. But as the night went on, he thought more and more.
"Oh! Stefan, you'll break my ribs! You squeezed all my breath out!"
"I'm sorry. I just need to hold you."
"Well, I need to hold you, too."
"Thank you, angel."
Everything was quiet in the room with the high ceiling. One window was open, letting the moonlight through. In the sky, even the moon seemed to creep stealthily along, and the shaft of moonlight followed it on the hardwood floor.
Damon smiled. He had had a long,