The Hunters: Phantom Chapter 31

Knowing he couldnt perform the ritual on an empty stomach, Stefan hunted pour down several squirrels in Mrs. Flowerss sanctionyard, thusly returned to the boardinghouses service department. Meredith had pose Mrs. Flowerss antique Ford out in the drive, and in that respect was more than abounding mode to set up e rattlingthing they needed for the banishment ritual. Stefan cocked his clearance at a skittering noise in the shadows and identified the fast-beating heart of a microscopical mouse. The atmosp here(predicate) might not be a comfortable whizz, tho the spaciousness of the room and its cement floor meant it would be an excel ent personate to work the spel .Hand me the tape measure, please, Alaric give tongue to from his sprawled position in the halfway of the garage floor. I need to reward this line just the righteousness length. Mrs. Flowers had dug up a box of multicolored chalk from somewhere in the boardinghouse, and Alaric had the obligate propped open and was mensurable y copying the circles, esoteric symbols, parabolas, and el ipses from its pages onto the smooth cement.Stefan gave him the tool and watched as he measured careful y from the innermost circle to a row of strange runes skilful the outermost edge of his drawing. Its important that everything be precise, Alaric said, frowning and doublechecking the ends of the measuring tape. The smal est hallucination could lead to us accidental y setting this thing loosen in Fel s church.But isnt it loose al get wordy? asked Stefan.No, Alaric explained. This ritual wil al ow the phantom to appear in its corpo strong form, which is far more severe than the insubstantial thing it is now.Then youd better get this right, Stefan agreed grimly.If this al goes as planned, the phantom wil be trapped in the innermost circle, Alaric said, pointing. Wel be at the outermost edge, over there past the runes. We ought to be unspoilt out there. He looked up and gave Stefan a rueful grin.I for etaste. Im mysophobic Ive never done any kind of summoning in real life before, although Ive read a lot about it.Terrific, Stefan thought, exclusively he returned Alarics grinning without comment. The man was doing the best he could. Al they could do was hope it would be enough to save Elena and the opposites.Meredith and Mrs. Flowers entered the garage, each carrying a plastic obtain bug out. Celia trailed behind them.Holy water, Meredith said, lifting a plant spread overer out of her pouch to salute him.It doesnt work on vampires, Stefan reminded her.Were not summoning a vampire, she replied, and went off to mist the outer blanks in the diagram, careful not to disturb the chalk lines.Alaric stood and started very cautiously hopping out of the huge multicolored diagram, clutching the book in one hand. I think were about ready, he said.Mrs. Flowers looked at Stefan. We need the others, she said. Everyone modify by the phantoms powers has to be here.Il help you carry them down, Alaric offered.Not necessary, Stefan told him, and headed upstairs alone. standing(a) by the side of the bed in the atomic rose-andcream bedroom, he looked down at Elena, Matt, and average. None of them had moved since he had placed Matt there.He sighed and gathered Elena in his arms first. After a moment, he withal picked up her pil ow and a blanket. At least he could try to imbibe her comfortable.A a couple of(prenominal) minutes later al three of the sleepers were deceitfulness in the front of the garage, wel outside the diagram, their heads supported by pil ows. now what? Stefan asked.Now we each choose a candle, Mrs. Flowers said, opening her plastic bag. One that you pure tone represents you in color. According to the book, they real y should be handdipped and special y scented, merely this wil just wear to do. I wont pick one myself, Mrs. Flowers said, handing the bag to Stefan. The phantom hasnt focused its powers on me, and I dont remember being grabby of any one since 1943.What happened in 1943? asked Meredith curiously.I lost the Little Miss Fel s Church crown to Nancy Sue Baker, Mrs. Flowers answered. When Meredith gaped at her, she threw her hands up in the air. stock-stilltide I was a child once, you know. I was strikingly adorable, with Shirley Temple curls, and my capture wantd to dress me in fril s and show me off.Putting the staggering image of Mrs. Flowers in Shirley Temple curls out of his mind, Stefan poked through the assortment of candles and chose a night blue one. It seemed right to him somehow. We need candles for the others, too, he said. Careful y, he chose a golden one for Elena and a pink one for mediocre. be you just going by their hair colors? asked Meredith.Youre such a guy.You know these are the right colors for them, though,Stefan argued. Besides, Bonnies hair is red, not pink.Meredith nodded grudgingly. I guess youre right. White for Matt, though.Real y? Stefan asked. He didnt know what he would have ch osen for Matt. American-flag patterned, maybe, if they had had it.Hes the purest person I know, Meredith said softly. Alaric raised an supercilium at her and she elbowed him.Pure in spirit, I mean. What you see is what you get with Matt, and hes pricey and truehearted al the way through.I suppose so, said Stefan, and he watched without comment as Meredith chose a dark brown candle for herself.Alaric shuffled through the bag and picked a dark green candle, and Celia selected one of pale lavender. Mrs. Flowers took the bag with the remaining candles and st changeed it on a high shelf near the garage doors, betwixt a bag of potting soil and what looked akin an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.They al sat down on the garage floor in a semicircle, outside the diagram, facing toward the empty inner circle, holding their unlighted candles. The sleepers lay behind them, and Meredith held Bonnies candle in her lap as wel as her own Stefan took Elenas, and Alaric Matts.Now we anoint them w ith our line, Alaric said. They al looked at him, and he shrugged defensively. Its what the book says.Meredith removed a smal pocketknife from her bag, cut her finger, and quickly, matter-of-factly, smeared a stripe of blood from the top to the bottom of her brown candle, thusly passed the knife to Alaric a farseeing with a little bottle of disinfectant. One by one, the others fol owed her lead.This is real y unsanitary, Celia said, wincing, but she fol owed through.Stefan was very aware of the smel of human blood in such an envelop space. Even though hed just fed, his canines prickled in an automatic response.Meredith picked up the candles and walked to their dormancy friends, crossing from one to the next and raising their hands to make a swift cut and wipe their blood against their candles. Not one of them even flinched. When she had finished, Meredith redistributed the sleepers candles and returned to her spot.Alaric began to read, in Latin, the first words of the spel . After a few sentences, he hesitated at a word and Stefan silently took the grimoire. Smoothly he picked up where Alaric had left off. The words flowed off his tongue, the feel of the Latin on his lips reminding him of hours spent with his childhood tutor hundreds of years ago, and of a period when he lived in a monastery in England during the early days of his struggle with vampirism.When the duration came, he snapped his fingers and, with a touch of Power, his candle lit itself. He pass on it to Meredith, who dripped a little of the melted wax onto the garage floor at the edge of the diagram and stuck the candle there. One by one, at the seize points in the ritual, he lit a candle and she placed it, until there was a little row of multicolored candles bravely burning between them and the chalk outlines of the diagram.Stefan read on. Suddenly the pages of the book began to flutter. A cold, unnatural interlace rose inside the closed garage, and the flames of the candles flickered wild ly and then blew out. Two candles fel over. Merediths long hair whipped approximately her face.This isnt supposed to happen, Alaric shouted. But Stefan just squinted his eye against the gale and read on.The pitch-blackness and the unpleasant sensation of fal ing lasted for only a moment, and then Elena landed jarringly on both feet and staggered forward, clutching Matts and Bonnies hands.They were in a dim octagonal room lined with doors. A single piece of furniture sat in the center. lav the lone desk lounged a tanned, comely, amazingly muscular, bare-chested vampire with a long, gyrate mane of bronze hair fal ing past his shoulders.Instantly Elena knew where she was.Were here. She gasped. The GatehouseSage leaped to his feet on the other side of the desk, his face almost comical y surprised. Elena? he exclaimed.Bonnie? Matt? Whats going on? Quest-ce qui arrive?Usual y, Elena would have been relieved to see Sage, who had always been kind and helpful to her, but she had to get to Damon. She knew where he must be. She could almost hear him cal ing to her.She strode across the empty room with barely a glance at the startled gatekeeper, pul ing Matt and Bonnie along with her.Sorry, Sage, she said as she reached the door she wanted. Weve got to find Damon.Damon? he said. Hes linchpin again? and then they passed through, ignoring Sages shouts of Stop ArretezvousThe door closed behind them, and they set themselves in a landscape of ash. Nothing grew here, and there were no landmarks. rough winds had blown the fine black ash into shifting hil s and val eys. As they watched, a strong gust caught at the light top work of ash and sent it flying in a cloud that currently settled into new shapes. Below the lighter ash, they could see swamps of wet, muddy ash. nigh was an ash-choked pool of stil water. Nothing but ash and mud, except for an occasional sear and blackened bit of wood.Above them was a twilit riffle in which hung a huge planet and two great moons, one a swirling bluish white, the other silvery.Where are we? said Matt, gaping up at the sky.Once this was a world a moon, technical y that was shaded by a huge tree, Elena told him, walking steadily forward. Until I destroyed it. This is where Damon died.She felt up rather than saw Matt and Bonnie exchange a glance. But, uh, then he came keep going, right? You saw him in Fel s Church the other night, didnt you? Matt said hesitantly. Why are we here now?I know that Damons close, Elena said impatiently. I can feel him. Hes come back here. Maybe this is where he began his search for the phantom. They kept walking. Soon they were not so much walking as wading through black ash that stuck to their legs in nasty thick clumps. The mud underneath the ash clung to their shoes, cathartic them at each step with a wet sucking sound.They were almost there. She could feel it. Elena picked up the pace, and the others, stil linked to her, hurried to keep up. The ash was thicker and deeper he re because they were approaching where the trunk had been, the very center of this world. Elena remembered it exploding, shooting up into the sky like a rocket, disintegrating as it went. Damons body had lain underneath and had been completely interred in the fal ing ash.Elena stopped. There was a thick, drifting pile of ash that looked like it would be at least as high as her cannon in places. She thought she could see where Damon had awoken the ash was disturbed and caved in, as if someone had tunneled out of one of the deeper drifts. But there was no one rough except themselves. A cold wind blew up a atomizer of ash, and Bonnie coughed. Elena, kneedeep in cold, sticky ash, dropped Bonnies hand and wrapped her arms around herself.Hes not here, she said blankly. I was so sure he would be here.He must be somewhere else, then, said Matt synthetical y.Im sure hes fighting the phantom, like you said he was going to. The black Dimensions a big place.Bonnie shivered and huddled c loser to Matt, her brown eyes huge and ful of pathos, like a hungry puppys. Can we go habitation now? Please? Sage can send us back again, cant he?I just dont understand, Elena said, staring at the empty space where the great trunk of the tree had once been. I just knew he would be here. I could practical y hear him cal ing me.Just then a low, musical laugh cut through the silence. It was a beautiful sound, but there was something chil y and alien about it, something that made Elena shudder.Elena, Bonnie whispered, her eyes wide. Thats the thing I heard before the fog took me.They turned.Behind them stood a woman. A woman-shaped being, anyway, Elena amended quickly. This was no woman. And, like its laugh, this woman-shaped being was beautiful, but frightening. She it was huge, more than one and a half times the size of a human, but perfectly proportioned, and it looked like it was made of ice and mist in blues and greens like the purest glacier, its eyes were clear with just a to uch of pale green. As they watched, its solid, icytranslucent hips and legs shifted and blurred, changing to a swirl of mist.A long wave of blue-green hair drifted behind it, its shape like a gradual y roiling cloud. It smiled at Elena, and its sharp teething shone like silvery icicles. There was something in its chest, though, that wasnt ice, something solid and roundish and dark, dark red.Elena saw al of this in an instant before her attention was ful y riveted on what hung from the ice-woman-things outstretched hand.Damon. She gasped.The ice-woman was holding him casual y around the neck, ignoring his struggles as he dangled in the air. It held him so easily that he looked like a toy. The black-clad vampire swung out with his leg, kicking at the ice-womans side, but his foot evidently passed through mist.Elena, Damon said in a choked, thin voice. The ice-woman the phantom cocked its head to one side and looked at Damon, then squeezed his neck a little tighter.I dont need to b reathe, you idiot phantom, he gasped defiantly.The phantoms smile widened and it said in a sweet, cold voice, like crystals chiming together, But your head can pull down off, cant it? Thatl do just as wel . It shook him a little, and then transferred its smile to Elena, Bonnie, and Matt. Elena instinctively stepped back as the glacier-cold eyes demonstrate her.Welcome, the phantom said to her in a tone of pleasure, as though they were old friends. Ive found you and your friends so refreshing, al your little jealousies. Each of you with your own special tactile sensation of envy. Youve got an awful lot of problems, dont you? I havent felt so strong or so wel -nourished for mil ennia. Its face became thoughtful, and it began to shake Damon gently up and down. He was making a guttural choking noise now, and tears of perturb ran down his face.But you real y should have stayed where I endue you, the phantom continued, its voice a little colder, and it swung Damon casual y in a great arc through the air. He wheezed and pul ed at its huge hand. Was it even true that he didnt need to breathe? Elena didnt know. Damon wasnt to a higher place lying about it if he had a reason, or even for no reason except to annoy his opponent.Stop it Elena shouted.The phantom laughed again, genuinely amused. Go ahead and make me, little one. Its grip tightened around Damons throat and he shuddered. Then his eyes rol ed back until Elena could see only the ghastly, red-veined whites of his eyes, and he went limp.