07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

Crossing the lake was slow, but Elena didn’t see anything particularly deadly about it. It
was simply the smoothest, slickest ice she had ever encountered. Her boots wanted to skate.
“Hey, everybody!” Bonnie was skating, exactly as if she were in a rink, backward and
forward and sideways. “This is fun!”
“We’re not here to have fun,” Elena shouted back. She longed to try it herself, but was
afraid to make cuts—even scuffs—in the ice. And beside that, Bonnie was expending twice as much
energy as she needed to.
She was about to call out to Bonnie and tell her this, when Damon, in a voice of
exasperation, made all the points she had thought of, and a few more.
“This isn’t a pleasure cruise,” he said shortly. “It’s for the fate of your town.”
“As if you care,” Elena murmured, turning her back on him and touching the unhappy
Bonnie’s hand both to give comfort and to get them going at arm’s length again. “Bonnie, do you sense
anything magical about the lake?”
“No.” But then Bonnie’s imagination seemed to fly into high gear. “But maybe it’s where
the mystics from both dimensions all gathered to exchange spells. Or maybe it’s where they used the
ice like a real magic mirror to see faraway places and things.”
“Maybe both of them,” Elena said, secretly amused, but Bonnie nodded solemnly.
And that was when it came. The sound Elena had been waiting for.
Nor was it a distant booming which could be ignored or discussed. They had been
walking at arm’s length from one another to avoid stressing the ice, while the thurgs walked behind
them, and to either side—like a flock of geese with no leaders.
This noise was a dreadfully near crack like the report of a gun. Immediately, it sounded
again, like a whiplash, and then a crumbling.
It was to Elena’s left, on Bonnie’s side.
“Skate, Bonnie,” she shouted. “Skate as fast as you can. Scream if you see land.”
Bonnie didn’t ask a single question. She took off like an Olympic speed skater in front of
Elena, and Elena swiftly turned.
It was Biratz, the thurg Bonnie had asked Pelat about. She had one monstrous back leg in
the ice, and as she struggled, more ice cracked.
Stefan! Can you hear me?
Faintly. I’m coming for you.
Yes—but only come as close as you need to Influence the thurg.
Influence the—?
Make her calm, put her out, whatever. She’s ripping up the ice and it’ll just make it
harder to get her out!
This time there was a pause before Stefan’s answer came. She knew though, by faint
echoes, that he was talking telepathically with someone else. All right, love, I’ll do it. I’ll take care
of the thurg, too. You follow Bonnie.
He was lying. Or, not lying, but keeping something from her. The person he’d been
sending thoughts to was Damon. They were humoring her. They didn’t mean to help at all.
Just at that moment she heard a shrill scream—not so far away. It was Bonnie in trouble
—no! Bonnie had found land!
Elena didn’t lose another second. She dumped her backpack on the ice and skated
straight back to the thurg.
There it was, so huge, so pathetic, so helpless. The very thing that had kept it safe from