But first she would gather all her Power, all the Power she'd been unconsciously using to dull the pain and give her strength - she would gather it and light up this place so she could see if the road was visible - or, better, a house - from where she stood. It was only a human's power but, again, the knowledge of how to use it made all the difference, she thought. She gathered the Power in one tight white ball and then loosed it, twisting to look around before it dissipated.
Trees. Trees. Trees.
Oaks and hickories, white pine and beech. No high ground to get to. In every direction, nothing but trees, as if she were lost in some grimly enchanted forest and could never get out.
But shewould get out. Any of those directions would take her to people eventually - even east. Even east, she could just follow the stream until it led to people.
She wished she had a compass.
She wished she could see the stars.
She was trembling all over, and it wasn't just from the cold. She was injured; she was terrified. But she had to forget about that. Meredith wouldn't cry. Meredith wouldn't be terrified. Meredith would find a sensible way to get out.
She had to get help for Matt.
Gritting her teeth to ignore the pain, Elena started off. If any of her wounds had happened to her in isolation, she would have made a big fuss about it, sobbing and writhing over the injury. But with so many different pains, it had all melted into one terrible agony.
Be careful now. Make sure you're going straight and not tilting off at an angle. Pick your next target in your straight line of sight.
The problem was that by now it was too dark to see much of anything. She could just make out deeply grooved bark straight ahead. A red oak probably. All right, go to it. Hop - oh, it hurts - hop - the tears washing down her cheeks - hop - just a little farther - hop - you can make it - hop. She put her hand out on shaggy bark. All right. Now, look straight in front of you. Ah. Something gray and rough and massive ahead - maybe a white oak. Hop to it - agony - hop - somebody help me - hop - how long will it take? - hop - not that far now - hop.There. She put her hand on the wide rough bark.
And then she did it again.
And again.
And again. And again. And again.
"What is it?" Damon demanded. He'd been forced to let Shinichi lead once they were out of the car again, but he still kept the kekkai loosely around him and he still watched every move the fox made. He didn't trust him as far as - well, the fact was, he didn't trust him at all. "What's behind the barrier?" he said again, more roughly, tightening the noose around the kitsune's neck.
"Our little cabin - Misao's and mine."
"And it wouldn't possibly be a trap, would it?"
"If you think so, fine! I'll go in alone...." Shinichi had finally changed into a half-fox, half-human form: black hair to his waist, with ruby-colored flames licking up from the ends, one silky tail with the same coloration behind him waving behind him, and two silky, crimson-tipped twitching ears on top of his head.
Damon approved aesthetically, but more important, he now had a ready-made handle. He caught Shinichi by the tail and twisted.
"Stop that!"
"I'll stop it when I get Elena - unless you waylaid her deliberately. If she's hurt, I'm going to take whoever harmed her and cut him into slivers. His life is forfeit."
"No matter who it was?"
"No matter who."
Shinichi was quivering slightly.
"Are you cold?"
"...just...admiring your resolve." More inadvertent quivering. Almost shaking his entire body.Laughter?
"At Elena's discretion, I would keep them alive. But in agony." Damon twisted the tail harder. "Move!"
Shinichi took another step and a charming country cabin came into view, with a gravel path leading up between wild creepers that loaded the porch and hung down like pendants.
It was exquisite.
Even as the pain grew, Elena began to have hope. No matter how turned around she was, shehad to come out of the forest at some point. She had to make it. The ground was solid - no sign of mushiness or slanting downward. She wasn't headed for the creek. She was headed for the road. She could tell.
She fixed her sights on a distant, smooth-barked tree. Then she hopped to it, the pain almost forgotten in her new feeling of certainty.
She fell against the massive, peeling, ash-gray tree. She was resting against it when something bothered her. Her dangling leg. Why wasn't it bumping painfully against the trunk? It had knocked continually against all the other trees when she turned to rest. She pulled back from the tree, and, as if she knew it were important, gathered all her Power and let it go in a burst of white light.
The tree with the huge hole in it, the tree she had started from, was in front of her.
For a moment Elena stood completely still, wasting Power, holding the light. Maybe it was some different...
No. She was on the other side of the tree, but it was the same one. That washer hair caught in the peeling gray bark. That dried blood washer handprint. Below it was where her bloody leg had left a mark - fresh.
She'd walked straight out and come straight back to this tree.
"Noooooooooooooo!"
It was the first vocalized sound she'd made since she'd fallen out of the Ferrari. She'd endured all that pain in silence, with little gasps or sharp breaths, but she'd never cursed and screamed. Now she wanted to do both.
Maybe it wasn't the same tree -
Nooooooo, nooooooo, noooooooooooo!
Maybe her Power would come back and she'd see that she'd only hallucinated -
No, no, no, no, no, no!
It just wasn't possible -
Nooooooo!
Her crutch slipped from under her arm. It had dug into her armpit so deeply that the pain there rivaled the other pains. Everything hurt. But worst was her mind. She had a picture in her mind of a sphere like the Christmas snow globes you shook to make snow or glitter fall through liquid. But this sphere had trees all over the inside. From top to bottom, side to side, all trees, all pointing toward the middle. And herself, wandering inside this lonely sphere...no matter where she went, she'd find more trees, because that was all there were in this world she'd stumbled into.