* * *
It was 2:00 A.M. before Stefan felt that Elena had stabilized enough for him to remove his life support and let her heart and lungs work on their own. They did work, sweetly and handsomely, closing his throat with gratitude. Elena was still receiving IV fluids and blood products.
Stefan felt new strength flood him at the knowledge that Elena’s body was going to live, although now he was free to worry about what oxygen deprivation might have done to her diamond-bright mind.
Just be glad that Elena was fragile only in comparison to vampire-strength, he told himself. She had always bloomed with health, even in the most malodorous of environments; scarcely falling sick for even a day, and recovering quickly from injuries.
However, right now it was Stefan who had all her healthy blood inside him, while her veins were filled with the donations of strangers: strangers to whom Stefan suddenly felt the deepest gratitude. Their contributions had saved Elena’s life, and it briefly crossed Stefan’s mind that he might thank some regular blood donors in the future. After all, he was going to have a lot of time on his hands soon enough.
He had figured it all out while he stood by Elena’s bedside, silently Influencing new doctors and nurses who hastened in and out of the room. As the hours passed, he had meticulously planned every detail of what had to happen next.
Now was the time to put his plan into action.
Of course, before the plan, he had conducted a trial in his own head. He had been judge and jury, and now he took his rightful place as executioner.
He would do what had to be done to keep Elena safe. Counterintuitive and drastic as the action might be, he had relentlessly followed the prosecutor’s argument to the only possible conclusion.
His chance to put his scheme into motion came immediately. There was a lull in the activity around Elena; Stefan used Influence to make it longer. He leaned in and very gently touched Elena’s temple, just above her oxygen mask, where blue veins showed beneath translucent skin. This process would have worked far better if he could have bitten her, but that, of course, was out of the question.
Stefan put the full Power of his stolen blood to work.
Elena was going to be the hardest of all the people he had to Influence deeply, he kept telling himself, as he encountered blocks and areas of obstinate resistance in her mind. Elena was naturally the most difficult because with her he had to do so much by hand, rather than simply using a seek-and-destroy memory neuro-virus.
By hand it was a little like doing surgery with a steak knife, unfolding the layers of Elena’s mind and examining them closely and cutting necessary bits out. Now and then Stefan came across something that seared his soul, and those things he made sure to destroy so thoroughly that even adjacent areas were obliterated.
For instance, a memory of a conversation about himself in the horrible prison in the Dark Dimension. He had been close to death for lack of feeding. For three days when the ancient metal bucket of slaughtered bull blood had arrived at his cell as the least senior vampire prisoner, there had been nothing inside but rusty stains. He had sworn to himself that he would not behave like an animal, but on the third day he had fallen on the bucket like a starving tiger and had clawed at the rusty flakes and sucked them off his fingernails. He had no hope of survival to see a fourth day.
And then, from beyond all hope, Elena had come to him. She had been dreaming of him, and dreaming had somehow loosed the tether of her body to her spirit. Astral projection, or out of body experience, the scientists in their universities called it. Elena had come to him because she was starving, too—starving for the sight of him, for the feeling of their arms around each other.
Her choking horror at the sight of his cell and his own ragged, white-faced and filthy condition had nearly overwhelmed her, he knew. But, Elena—being Elena—had refused to be overwhelmed or to show pity that would wrest away the last scraps of dignity that he possessed. She had listened with childlike complicity to his lie about having a secret store of Black Magic wine, which helped a vampire when no blood was to be had. She had held him with insubstantial arms and kissed him with ethereal lips, while ghostly tears had rolled down her cheeks and fallen onto his face. She had wept because her spectral blood could do him no good.
Every tear was like a cup of cool water spilled onto his burning body. It had taken him long bewildered minutes to understand, but in the end he solved the mystery. The phantom tears of a pure maiden could cure all ills.
Her tears had saved his life.
And he had whispered, thinking with a fully sane mind for the first time in a week:
“And when all wells are drawne dry,
I'll drink a tear out of thine eye.”
“Is that Shakespeare?” Elena had asked between soft sobs. She had allowed herself to give in to the wrenching s
orrow because it would help him.
“Richard Lovelace,” he’d whispered. “He lived in the seventeenth century, and died alone and a pauper. He was the one who said, ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.’ ”
Stefan had glanced with derisive humor at the iron bars of his own cell, which certainly made a cage for him, especially now that he was so feeble. When vampires were kept close to death they fell to the general supernatural weakness against iron.
Elena had understood. She always understood him, and she’d wept even harder. “I’m coming to get you out,” she’d said. “Nothing will stop me from getting to you.”
And Stefan had shaken his head, holding her insubstantial form so carefully, so precisely, as if she were brittle rather than untouchable. “It doesn’t matter,” he’d murmured. “Not now. You’re with me already. Elena, if something happens to me before you do arrive in person—”
“Nothing will happen to you before that!” Elena had cried, showering him with tears.
“But if something does, remember. Always remember, my heart:
‘If I have freedom in my love