Midnight

"Misao and I used to do that,"Shinichi said. "Talk alone together on a special frequency. You’re certainly a good manipulator, Elena, to keep them from kil ing each other over you."

"Yes, it’s a special frequency I cal the truth,"Elena said. "But I’m not half as good a manipulator as Damon is. Now attack us or let us go away. We’re in a hurry!"

"Attack you?"Shinichi seemed to be thinking over the idea.

And then, faster than Elena could track it, he went for Bonnie.

The vampires, who had been expecting him to try to get to Elena, were caught off guard, but Elena, who had seen the flicker of his eyes toward the weaker girl, was already diving for him. He moved back so quickly that she found herself heading for his legs, but then she realized she had a chance to throw him off balance. She deliberately went for a headbutt with his kneecap, at the same time stabbing deep into his foot with her knife.

Forgive me, Bonnie, she thought, knowing what he would do. It was the same as what he’d had his puppet, Damon, do when he’d held Elena and Matt hostage before – except that he didn’t need a pine branch to direct the pain. Black energy erupted directly from his hands into Bonnie’s smal body.

But there was another factor he hadn’t taken into account.

When he’d had Damon attack Matt and Elena he’d had the sense to keep away from them while directing agony into their bodies. This time, he’d seized Bonnie and wrapped his arms around her. And Bonnie was a most excel ent telepath herself, especial y at projecting. When the first wave of agony hit her, she screamed – and redirected the pain toward Shinichi.

It was like completing a circuit. It didn’t hurt Bonnie any less, but it meant that anything Shinichi did to her he felt in his own body, amplified by Bonnie’s terror. That was the system that Elena slammed into as hard as she could. When her head impacted with his knee, his kneebone was the more fragile of the two, and something inside it crackled. Dazed, she concentrated on twisting the knife she’d stabbed through his foot and into the soil below.

It wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t had two extremely agile vampires right behind her. Since Shinichi didn’t fal over, she would just have been putting her neck at the perfect level for him to snap cleanly.

But Stefan was only a split second behind her. He seized her and was out of Shinichi’s reach before the kitsune could even assess the situation properly.

"Let me go,"Elena gasped at Stefan. She was determined to get Bonnie. "I left my knife,"she added craftily, finding a more concrete reason for forcing Stefan to let her back into the fray.

"Where?"

"In his foot, of course."

She could feel Stefan trying not to laugh out loud. "I think that’s a good place to leave it. Take one of mine,"he added.

If you’ve quite finished your little chat, you might get rid of his tails, came Damon’s cold telepathy.

At that moment Bonnie passed out, but with her own telepathic circuits Stillwide open and directed back toward Shinichi. And now Damon had gone into offensive mode, as if he cared nothing about Bonnie’s well-being, as long as he could get through her to Shinichi.

Stefan, quick as a striking snake, went for one of the many tails that now waved behind Shinichi, advertising his tremendous Power. Most of them were translucent, and they surrounded his real tail – the flesh-and-blood tail that every fox had.

Stefan’s knife went snick and one of the phantom tails fel to the ground and then disappeared. There was no blood, but Shinichi keened in fury and pain.

Damon, meanwhile, was ruthlessly attacking from the front.

As soon as Stefan had distracted the kitsune from the back, Damon slashed both Shinichi’s wrists – one quickly on the upstroke, the other just as fast on the down-stroke. Then he went for a body blow just at the moment that Stefan, with Elena held like a baby on his hip, snicked away another phantom tail.

Elena was struggling. She was seriously worried that Damon would kill Bonnie to get to Shinichi. And besides, she herself would not be toted around like a piece of luggage!

Civilization had tumbled down al around her and she was reacting from her deepest instincts: protect Stefan, protect Bonnie, protect Fel ‘s Church. Put the enemy down. She hardly realized that in her heightened state she had sunk her unfortunately Still-human teeth into Stefan’s shoulder.

He winced slightly, but he listened to her. All right! Try to get Bonnie, then – see if you can ease her.

He let go of her just as Shinichi whirled to deal with him, channeling the black pain that, back on Earth, had flung Matt and Elena off their feet in seizures, directly toward Stefan.

Elena, just released, found that everyone was making a half turn, as if to oblige her, and suddenly she saw a chance. She snatched at the limp form of Bonnie, and Shinichi dropped the smal er girl into her arms.

Words were echoing in Elena’s brain. Get Bonnie. See if you can ease her.

Well, she had Bonnie now. Her own sense split Stefan’s two orders with another –  get her away from Shinichi. She’s the priceless hostage.

Elena found that she could almost scream with fury even now. She had to keep Bonnie safe – but that meant leaving Stefan, gentle Stefan, at the mercy of Shinichi. She scrambled away with Bonnie – so smal and light – and at the same time threw a backward glance at Stefan. He was wearing a slight frown of concentration now, but he was not only not overwhelmed with pain, he was pressing forward the attack.

Even though Shinichi’s head was on fire. The bril iant crimson tips of his black hair had burst into flames, as if nothing else would express his enmity and his certainty of winning. He was crowning himself with a flaming garland, a hel ish halo.

Elena’s anger at that turned into chil s down her spine as she watched something most people never lived to analyze: two vampires attacking together, perfectly in sync. There was the elemental savagery in it of a pair of raptors or wolves, but there was also the awesome beauty of two creatures working as a single, unified body. The distance in Stefan’s and Damon’s expressions said that this was a fight to the death. The occasional frown from Stefan or vicious smile from Damon meant that Shinichi was sending his searing dark Power through one or the other of them. But these weren’t weak humans Shinichi was playing with now. They were both vampires with bodies that healed almost instantly – and vampires who had both fed recently – from her –