'The Return: Midnight Chapter 25\r'

'â€Å"Sleeping in the remembering room with e rattling wal coe scarlet in Post-it government note amulets,”added Meredith grimly. â€Å"If we throw off enough. I got another packet, provided it doesnt go very far when youre nerve-racking to cover a room.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay,”Elena give tongue to. â€Å"Whos got Shinichis key?”\r\n planeness raised his reach. â€Å"In my †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Dont tel me!”exclaimed Elena. â€Å"Ive got hers. We cant doze off them. Stefan and I argon whiz team; you guys are the other.”\r\nThey half-led and half-supported Misao push through of Stefans room and round the stairs. Misao didnt try to playact by from them, to struggle, or to speak to them. This only make mat more suspicious of her. He motto Stefan and Elena glance toward each other and knew they were smell the resembling way.\r\n plainly what else was t present to do with her? on that point was no other way, forgivingely, or even in humanely, to restrain her for days.\r\nThey had her jumper lead bal , and according to books that was supposed to al ow them to control her, scarce she was right, it counted to be an obsolete notion, because it didnt work.\r\nTheyd tried with Stefan and Meredith holding her tightly, bandage plane got the star bal from w here hed been keeping it in a shoebox on the upper shelf higher up the habiliments in his closet.\r\nHe and Elena had tried to get Misao to do things while holding the almost empty celestial orbit: to make Misao tel where her brothers star bal was, and so on. save it barely didnt work.\r\nâ€Å"Maybe when theres so pocketable Power in it, it doesnt apply,”Elena give tongue to final y. But that was smal comfort at best.\r\nAs they in any casek Misao to the kitchen, Matt thought that it had been a poor fish plan of the kitsune: imitating Stefan twice.\r\nDoing it the second prison term, when the humans were on guard, that was stupid. Misao didnt get a linem as stupid as that.\r\nMatt had a bad feeling.\r\nElena had a very bad feeling around what they were doing. As she enumerateed virtually at the faces of the others, she power saying that they did too. But nobody had come up with a better plan.\r\nThey couldnt kil Misao. They werent murderers who could kil a sickly, passive girl in crackd blood.\r\nShe figured that Shinichi moldiness suck in very keen hearing, and had already comprehend them walking on the creaking kitchen floorboards. And she had to assume that he knew †by mindbond, or dependable logic, or whatever †that Misao was right above him. There was nothing to lose by sh asideing, by means of the un open up door, â€Å"Shinichi, weve got your sister here! If you want her backward youl stay quiet and not make us throw her conquer the stairs.”\r\nThere was silence from the get-go cel ar. Elena chose to signify of it as submissive silence. At least(prenominal) Shinichi wasnt yel ing threats.\r\nâ€Å"Okay,”Elena whispered. Shed evolven a position directly tin can Misao. â€Å"When I count to three, we push as catchy as we can.”\r\nâ€Å"Wait!”Matt say in a miserable whisper-sh break. â€Å"You state we wouldnt throw her down the stairs.”\r\nâ€Å"Life isnt fair,”Elena said grimly. â€Å"You think he doesnt have some surprise for us?”\r\nâ€Å"But †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å" resign it, Matt,”said Meredith quietly. She had the troll ready in her left field hand and with her right was ready to push on the panel for opening the door. â€Å"Everybody ready?”\r\nEvery unity nodded. Elena felt muddy for Matt and Stefan, who were the most honest and sensitive of al of them.\r\nâ€Å" bingle,”she whispered softly, â€Å"two, three.”\r\nOn three Meredith hit the conceal wal switch. And then things began to happen in very tedious motion.\r\nBy â€Å"two”Elena had already begun to shove Misa o toward the door. On â€Å"three”the others joined her.\r\nBut the door seemed to take forever to open. And before the ending of forever, everything went wrong.\r\nThe greenness around Misaos liberty chit spread twigs in al directions. One drawstring shot reveal and snagged Elena around the wrist. She perceive a yel of yard forwardrage from Matt and knew that another strand had gotten him.\r\nâ€Å"Push!” Meredith sh come oned and then Elena saying the stave coming at her. Meredith whisked with the stave through the greenery connected to Misao. The vine that had been cutting into Elenas wrist fel to the floor.\r\nAny rest misgivings about throwe Misao down the stairs vanished. Elena joined in the crowd trying to push her through the opening. But there was something wrong in the root cellar. For one thing, they were shoving Misao into pitch-darkness…and movement.\r\nThe basement was ful of †something. Some things.\r\nElena looked down at her ankle and was horrify to see a gigantic maggot that seemed to have crawled out of the root cel ar. Or at least a maggot was the first thing she could think of to compare it to †perhaps it was a headless slug. It was translucent and swarthy and about a foot long, entirely far too plunk down for her to have put a hand around it. It seemed to have two ways of moving, one by the familiar hunch-and-straighten method and the other by simply sticking to other maggots, which were exploding up over Elenas head deal a hideous fountain.\r\nElena looked up and wished she hadnt.\r\nThere was a cobra waving over them, out of the root cel ar and into the kitchen. It was a cobra make of black translucent maggots stuck together, and every so often one would fal off and land among the group and there would be a cry.\r\nIf Bonnie had been with them, she would have screamed until the wineglasses in the cupboards shattered, Elena thought wildly. Meredith was trying to attack the cobra with the stav e and reach into her jeans paper bag for Post-it Notes at the same time.\r\nâ€Å"Il get the notes,”Elena gasped, and wriggled her hand into Merediths pocket. Her fingers closed on a smal sheaf of cards and she tugged it out triumphantly.\r\nJust then the first glistening fat maggot fel on her bare skin.\r\nShe treasured to scream with distress as its little feet or teeth or suckers †whatever kept it attached to her †burned and stung. She pul ed a thin card from the sheaf, which was not a Post-it Note but the same amulet on a smal rather flimsy note card, and slapped it on the maggot-like thing.\r\nNothing happened.\r\nMeredith was thrusting the stave into the middle of the cobra now. Elena saw another of the creatures fal almost onto her up bringed face and managed to turn away so that it hit her col ar instead. She tried another card from the sheaf and when it just now floated away †the maggots looked gooey but werent †she gave a primordial scream a nd ripped with both hands at the disfigured things attached to her. They gave way, leaving her skin covered with red marks and her T-shirt torn at the shoulder.\r\nâ€Å"The amulets arent working,”she yel ed to Meredith.\r\nMeredith was actual y standing nether the swaying, hooded head of the maggot-cobra, stabbing and stabbing as if to reach the center. Her region was muffled. â€Å"Not enough amulets leastwise! Too more of these grubs. Youd better run.”\r\nAn instant later Stefan shouted, â€Å"Everybody get away from here! Theres something solid in there!”\r\nâ€Å"Thats what Im trying to get!”Meredith shouted back.\r\nFrantical y, Matt yel ed, â€Å"Wheres Misao?”\r\nThe cobblers last time Elena had seen her she had been diving into the writhing mass of segmented darkness. â€Å"Gone,”she shouted back. â€Å"Wheres Mrs. Flowers?”\r\nâ€Å"In the kitchen,”said a illustration shadow her. Elena glanced back and saw the o ld woman pul ing down herbs with both hands.\r\nâ€Å"Okay,”Stefan shouted. â€Å"Everybody, take a few steps back.\r\nIm going to hit it with Power. Do it †now!”\r\nHis voice was like a whiplash. Everyone stepped back, even Meredith who had been probing the serpent with her stave.\r\nStefan curled his hand around nothingness, around air, and it off-key to sparkling, swirling bright energy. He threw it point-blank into the cobra do of maggots.\r\nThere was an explosion, and then suddenly it was raining maggots. Elena had her teeth locked so as to keep herself from screaming. The oval translucent bodies of the maggots broke open on the kitchen floor like ripe plums, or else bounced. When Elena dared look up again she saw a black stain on the ceiling.\r\n under it, smiling, was Shinichi.\r\nMeredith, lightning quick, tried to put the stave through him.\r\nBut Shinichi was faster, leaning out of her way, and out of the next thrust, and the next.\r\nâ€Å"You h umans,”he said. â€Å"Al the same. Al stupid. When Midnight final y comes youl see how stupid you were.”He said â€Å"Midnight”as if he were saying â€Å"the Apocalypse.”\r\nâ€Å"We were smart enough to discover that you werent Stefan,”Matt said from behind Shinichi.\r\nShinichi rol ed his eyes. â€Å"And to put me into a little room roofed with wood. You cant even think up that kitsune control al plants and trees? The wal s are al ful of malach grubs by now, you know. Thoroughly infested.”His eyes flickered †and he glanced backward, Elena saw, feeling toward the open door of the root cel ar.\r\nHer terror soared, and at the same time Stefan shouted, â€Å"Get out of here! Out of the class! Go to somewhere respectable!”\r\nElena and Meredith stared at each other, paralyzed. They were on different teams, but they couldnt seem to let go of each other. past Meredith snapped out of it and turned to the back of the kitchen to hel p Mrs. Flowers. Matt was already there, doing the same thing.\r\nAnd then Elena found herself sweep off her feet and moving fast. Stefan had her and was running toward the front door.\r\nDistantly, she heard Shinichi shout, â€Å"Bring me back their bones!”\r\nOne of the maggots that Elena batted out of the way burst its skin and Elena saw something creep out. These real y were malach, she realized. Smal er editions of the one that had swal owed Matts spike and left those long, deep scratches when he pul ed it out again.\r\nShe noticed that one was stuck on Stefans back. Reckless with fury, she grabbed it climb one end and ripped it off, yanking relentlessly even though Stefan gasped in pain.\r\nWhen it came free she got a glimpse of what looked like dozens of smal childrens teeth on the bottom side. She threw it against a wal as they reached the front door.\r\nThere they almost col ided with Matt, Meredith, and Mrs.\r\nFlowers, coming through the den. Stefan wrenched the door open and when they al were through Meredith slammed it shut. A few malach †grubs and Still-wet flying ones †made it out with them.\r\nâ€Å"Wheres safe?”snapped Meredith. â€Å"I mean, real y safe, safe for a couple of days?” incomplete she nor Matt had released their grip on Mrs. Flowers and from their speed Elena guessed that she must be almost as light as a straw figure. She kept saying, â€Å"My goodness! Oh, overnice!”\r\nâ€Å"My house?”Matt suggested. â€Å"The blocks bad, but it was okay the last time I saw it, and my moms gone with Dr.\r\nAlpert.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay, Matts house †using the Master Keys. But lets do it from the shop room. I do not want to open this front door again, no matter what,”Elena said.\r\nWhen Stefan tried to pick her up she shook her head. â€Å"Im fine. Run as fast as you can and smash any malach you see.”\r\nThey made it to the storage room, but now a sound like vipvipvip †a so rt of alto buzzing that could only have been produced by the malach †was fol owing them.\r\nâ€Å"What now?”Matt panted, helping Mrs. Flowers to sit on the bed.\r\nStefan hesitated. â€Å"Is your house real y safe, do you think?”\r\nâ€Å"Is anywhere safe? But its empty, or it should be.”\r\nMeanwhile, Meredith pull Elena and Mrs. Flowers aside. To Elenas inconsistency, Meredith was holding one of the smal er grubs, gripping it so that its underside was turned upward.\r\nâ€Å"Oh, God †â€Å"Elena protested, but Meredith said, â€Å"They look a lot like a little kids teeth, dont they?”\r\nSuddenly Mrs. Flowers became animated. â€Å"They do indeed!\r\nAnd youre saying that the femoris we found in the thicket †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Yes. It was certainly human but maybe not chewed by humans. human race children,”Meredith said.\r\nâ€Å"And Shinichi yel ed to the malach to bring back our bones…”Elena said and swal owed. T hen she looked at the grub again. â€Å"Meredith, get free of that thing somehow! Its going to pop out as a flying malach.”\r\nMeredith looked around the storage room blankly.\r\nâ€Å"Okay †just drop it and Il step on it,”Elena said, holding her breath to hold in her nausea.\r\nMeredith dropped the fat, translucent, black thing, which exploded on impact. Elena stamped on it, but the malach inside didnt crush. Instead, when she lifted her foot, it tried to skitter under the bed. The stave cut it cleanly in two.\r\nâ€Å"Guys,”Elena said sharply to Matt and Stefan, â€Å"we have to go now. impertinent are a bunch of flying malach!”\r\nMatt turned toward her. â€Å"Like the one that †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Smal er, but just like the one that attacked you, I think.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay, heres what we figured out,”Stefan said in a way that immediately made Elena uneasy. â€Å"Somebody has to go to the Dark Dimension anyway to check on Bonnie. I guess Im the only one to do that, since Im a vampire. You couldnt get in †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Yes, we could,”Meredith said. â€Å"With these keys, we could just say ‘Take us to bird Ulmas house in the Dark Dimension.Or ‘Take me to wherever Bonnie is.Why shouldnt it work?”\r\nElena said, â€Å"Okay. Meredith, Matt, and Mrs. Flowers can stay here and try to figure out what ‘Midnightis. From the way Shinichi said it, it sounded bad. Meanwhile, Stefan and I go to the Dark Dimension and develop Bonnie.”\r\nâ€Å"No!”Stefan said. â€Å"I wont take you to that horrible put up again.”\r\nElena looked him straight in the eye. â€Å"You promised,”she said, indifferent to the other pile in the room. â€Å"You promised. Never to go again on a quest without me. No matter how victimize the time, no matter what the cause. You promised.”\r\nStefan looked at her desperately. Elena knew he wanted to keep her safe †but w hich world was in truth safe now? Both were fil ed with horror and danger.\r\nâ€Å"Anyway,”she said with a grim smile, â€Å"I have the key.”\r\n'