“Well, he’s immortal, but they’d have to feed him and let him heal to get more blood to make the cure for human disease. Of course, once they did that, he could mind control all of them into being his own personal army until he could destroy all vampires for good.”
Cali blinks at me. “Why did I think for even a second that this couldn’t get worse?”
I press my lips tightly together. “Look, ransom isn’t an option, but we’ll find a way to get Damon back. We always do. But I don’t want you to be anywhere near here when we are forced to take on the Augustines.”
“Well then you shouldn’t be either!” she bursts out, curling her legs under her as she leans forward. “You may not be exactly human but you’re sure not immortal and I’m not the kind of girl that can bring you back from the dead, Jeremy!”
“Yes, but it’s Damon.” I explode off the bed but then stop, my shoulders slumping a little bit because I have nowhere to go. “He threw me his keys, Cali. He—”
I don’t have the right words but I want to tell her he stayed in Mystic Falls even though I could hear the longing in his voice when he was on the phone to my sister, and I could read the restlessness in the rhythm of his pacing for hours every night after he hung up the phone. He stayed at the lake house with me and Matt and trained me relentlessly, his eyes intent on every flaw in my movements even while he was listening to her voicemail for the twentieth time. I used to think he did those things for Elena, but now I know that’s not true, even though I’d be too embarrassed to try to explain the difference to anyone else.
“Don’t you think I get that?” Her back is painfully straight, her tousled hair swinging free. “Two weeks after my grandma had her first stroke, I was back at college, rehearsing three times a week, playing a show every weekend, barely making it up five minutes before my first class and pulling lattes at the fucking Starbucks, Jeremy.”
I hesitate, confused by her sudden switch in topic and frozen in place by the tears suddenly shimmering in her eyes.
“I’m the girl who didn’t go home when her family needed her,” she says with a catch in her normally confident voice that just destroys me. “So yeah, I get it.”
She looks up toward the ceiling, blinking rapidly like Caroline sometimes does when she’s trying not to cry, and I take a step back toward the bed before she holds up a hand to stop me.
“But if you’re going to be on the front lines, I’m going to be too,” she says, and fear rattles through me at the proclamation. She pulls one knee up and wraps her arms around it, ducking her head slightly as she says, “He told me the truth, Jeremy. He didn’t have to, and he sure didn’t have to make Stefan give me my original memories back, including every ugly minute of exactly how it happened. But he did.”
I swallow and drop my eyes because I kind of wish he wouldn’t have. Whatever she remembered, it obviously haunts her and maybe it would have been easier to have just the facts. But that’s Damon: all or nothing. It’s something most people hate about him.
“We left someplace we knew was safe, and when we struck out on our own we endangered every one of your friends and Damon came to help us anyway,” she says quietly. “And yeah, I know he wasn’t there for me. But he could have thrown me to the Augustines as a distraction and zoomed off with you, and he didn’t.”
This time there’s no holding the tears back and I shove the heels of my hands against my eyes and tip my head up to the ceiling, pressing hard because I want to growl, or scream or break something and I need to get back to Stefan’s room and make a plan but all I want to do is hit my knees and just collapse because she’s right.
Damon did all of this for me.
He told me, inside this same damn room, that he only gave Cali the truth because he knew how much she meant to me.
And just like that, I know what I have to do. I’ve heard Damon use me against Elena dozens of times. It was even how he got her out of the burning boarding house, because he knew I was the only thing she cared about enough to even think about leaving him behind.
I scrub my hands roughly down over my face as if I’m just tired and not trying to hide the tears that keep trying to creep out the corners of my eyes.
“And who is going to take care of your grandma if you get hurt?” The words are soft, but I see Cali’s lashes flinch as she looks down.
“Jeremy…”
“How long did it take them to break your wrist?” I continue ruthlessly. “No longer than it took to break Damon’s neck, that’s for sure. And then what, Cali? Your band will be auditioning new drummers and hiring a songwriter, your grandma will get sent to whatever institution her insurance will pay for, and…” My voice falters when I try to say what I would do if something happened to her.
All of this is because I tried to use a fancy piano that wasn’t even mine for an excuse to get a pretty girl to talk to me a little bit longer. I have screwed up so much and now I need to do the right thing. By her, by Damon, and by Elena, if it’s not already too late for that.
I drop down beside the bed, ducking my head to try to get her to look at me again. “My sister, my family, needs me right now, Cali. But yours does, too.”
She makes a sound that’s halfway between a groan and a growl, seizing me by the shoulders. “Don’t you think I know that, too? It’s just...these guys are dangerous, Jeremy and if something happens—” Her voice wavers and I rise up onto my knees next to the bed, cupping the back of her head and pressing my cheek to her temple.
“Hey, shh,” I murmur. “I’ll be okay.”
When she pulls back, her cheeks are wet but she glares so fiercely it’s like she’s daring me to notice. “You better be. Because if you stay and I don’t, and something happens to you, I’m going to have to figure out how to rent a flamethrower and something tells me that they’re going to want a big deposit for something like that.”
“What, you don’t think your gimpy little MasterCard can take it?” I tease, because I desperately need to see her smile one more time before I make her leave. I can’t bear the sight of her tears, not on top of everything else.
“My gimpy little MasterCard probably has more miles on it than your last car,” she growls, then swipes her fingertips under her eyes. “Show some respect.”
“For what, your bad credit score?” I joke, still angling for that smile.
She pokes me in the side, her lips pursing in a mock scowl. “Really? I tell you I don’t want you to die and you make fun of my financial planning?”
I tilt my head, and smile softly at her. “I kinda like that you don’t want me to die.”
She smiles back at me, but with something heavy in her eyes and the set of her shoulders and God, I wish I could go with her and still be here at the same time. I hate the thought of her back in a silent house in Trenton, with only her grandma’s steady breathing for company.
I glance toward Elena’s hotel room. “I should probably go. We need to make a plan, and Matt should know what’s going on. You guys can probably drive home together as soon as we rent a new truck to haul Silas in.”
“Yeah,” she says, her fingers fidgeting with her jeans. “Right, I know.”
“I’ll uh, get your stuff out of the car,” I say, moving toward the door.
“Jeremy…” She catches my hand, shooting up off the bed and when I turn back around, she ducks in under my chin and hugs me, one hand cupping my neck and threading through the hair that’s starting to get a little bit too long, clinging to me like this might be her last chance, and I rub my thumb against her lower back to soothe her even while my heart does its best to climb out of my chest.
When she finally pulls away, the slim silver ring in her lower lip is trembling, and looking at her long tear-wet eyelashes and her hair all messy and soft around her face, I feel like it might just kill me to send her back with Matt. But it doesn’t matter what I want right now, because first, I have to take care of my family.
I make myself pull away, pressing a fierce kiss to
her hair that makes her suck in a tiny breath, though she doesn’t speak. I can feel her watching me as I leave but I can’t afford to look back or I’m not sure I’ll be able to go.
The door closes behind me and I lean back against it, already starting to sink down toward the ground as I try to grasp the fact that I have no idea when I’ll see her again. Or if she’ll even want to see me again, after all she’s been through because of me, because of my family.
But then I realize that I need to go find Matt and see if he’ll give Cali a ride and that her stuff is in the trunk of the Camaro and I have to call Caroline’s mom and ask if she can put out an APB without a license plate number and I curse, getting right back up again because there hasn’t been a moment to rest since Elena first brought Stefan over for dinner years ago and I don’t know if there ever will be again.
Chapter 15: Lazarus
JEREMY
The storage unit smells like dust and sheet metal.
I push down the button to lock the door of the Camaro, something sticking in my throat at the finality of the motion. We’ll be back for it, I tell myself for the thousandth time. Once we save Damon and deal with the Augustines.
Pausing, I look at the chip in the glass on the inside of the driver’s side window. I can’t remember if it’s always been there. It's weird because it is the only thing on the car that’s not flawlessly maintained. It must be old, though. There are smudges all around it, because Damon always rests a finger in the tiny dent when he’s driving.
I close the door and look away. By now he must have woken up in that trunk. It was a hell of a fight, I bet, when the Augustines tried to take him out of there.
“Elena, we’ve got to go,” I remind my sister.
“One second,” she says, and pulls a coiled set of jumper cables out of the trunk. They look brand new, still zip tied together. “Rental cars don’t come with these,” she says, avoiding my eyes. “We might need them.”
“Sure,” I say. “No problem. But let’s get out of here. Everybody's waiting on us.”
“Jer,” she begins. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know how to tell—”
“Just don’t, Elena,” I cut her off, but then offer a tight smile. “We need to focus on finding Damon right now.”
She purses her lips uncertainly, but when I turn to go, she catches my sleeve. “Look, I can’t just keep riding around in a car with you, ignoring everything that happened with Cali.”
I turn back to look at her, dread rising in my chest. A big part of me doesn’t want to even bring this up, because I don’t want to justify what she did, but she’s my sister. And I can’t hate her.
“It’s true,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “All of the worst things you’re thinking about me. I knew Stefan fed from her and I chased her down and took her away from her family, and none of that would have happened if I wouldn’t have gotten jealous over Damon and given Cali vervain so I could find out what happened between them.” Her voice trembles a little as she admits it.
I blow out a breath, glancing down the aisle of the storage unit to make sure we’re still alone before I take a step back inside and lower my voice.
“Look, it’s not the blood, or even the compulsion. There’s no taking back the fact that you’re a vampire now and blood and secrets are part of the deal. But if you’re going to feed from people, you’ve got a responsibility to erase their memory right away. Otherwise it’s just…cruel.”
I’ve thought about this a lot, but right now I feel like a huge hypocrite to even say it, because I know the original mistake was Stefan’s, not Elena’s, and my own mistake is staring me right in the face in the form of Damon’s empty Camaro. I know, better than most, how quickly things get out of hand in our world.
Elena’s nodding quickly, eager to agree with me and take on all the blame for what happened, and I drop my eyes, shoving my hands into my pockets, because I hate knowing how bad she feels.
“It’s mostly the cell,” I admit quietly. “It’s the thought that she was locked up down there and I was just going about my business upstairs. It makes me feel like the worst asshole in the world.”
I’m scared as hell that if Cali can’t forgive my family, then I’ll never have a chance with her. But I’m not going to say it out loud and put that weight on my sister, too, because it’s not her problem.
“I should have told you,” Elena whispers, her hands fidgeting with each other. “I just…it makes me feel really dirty, too, you know? Like a criminal, and I didn’t want you to have to be a part of that.”
When I risk a glance at her, she’s hanging her head, her shoulders slumped in a way that hurts deep in my chest. I exhale and give in, pulling her into a hug, my throat tightening a little at the way her hands cling to my back, like she’s afraid to let me go. I rest my chin on top of her head for a second. “You’ve got to stop trying to protect me, ‘Lena,” I tell her softly. She makes a sound that’s muffled by my shirt and I squeeze her quickly, and then pull away. “We’ve got to get going,” I remind her.
I wait until she’s outside before I pull down the metal door, locking it with two industrial-strength padlocks.
I figure the Augustines can’t have put a tracker on the car, or they would have found us the first time we stopped at a hotel. Which means that once they can’t spot the Camaro on the road, we’ll be home free. We should have ditched the truck and the Camaro the second day on the road but every time Damon brought it up, Elena got really quiet and sad looking and he caved.
I can’t afford to let her be sentimental anymore. There’s too much at stake.
The storage facility is graveyard quiet, but I take a look up and down the aisles again anyway. I haven’t seen a soul but the owner since we came here, but still... If there’s any chance the Augustines followed us here, they’ll expect us to come out the main gate because it’s the only exit.
I make a quick decision, leading the way to the back corner of the storage facility and starting to climb the fence.
“Jeremy, what about the barbed wire?” Elena whispers furiously.
I shake my head at her and pull myself up on one of the V-shaped supports that hold the razor wire. I walk my feet as high as I can on the chain link and then swing a leg over the top and carefully lower my foot into the center of the support. I hear Elena suck in a frightened breath, but I’ve been doing this since I was ten. If you panic and lose your balance, you fall with your leg all tangled through the loops of razor wire. But if you do it slow and careful you can transfer one foot around to the other side, hold your weight on the support poles, and carefully pull your foot up and out without catching it on the wire.
When I drop to the other side, I see Elena shaking her head furiously before she bounds up and over the fence.
“I could have just tossed you,” she complains.
I give her an incredulous look because seriously? Like I need my tiny little sister to help me over a fence? I look away to check the Google Earth images on my phone, and then I take Elena through a maze of alleys and over two more fences before we come out on a quiet cul-de-sac where a black Suburban and an SUV sit idling. Matt took his truck when he and Cali headed back to Mystic Falls, and I’m hoping the rented Suburban will be lower profile than a coffin with a tarp over the top.
I pull open the back door of the SUV and climb inside. Stefan's driving and Caroline's in the passenger seat. She turns her head to give me that sympathetically awkward smile that rises to her face every time she looks at me now, since she's the only one left on the trip who wasn't involved in the whole Cali debacle.
"Ric get stuck driving the Hearst alone?" I ask, half-wishing I could join him. But we all need to talk and if I'm not here, everybody will start treating me like a little kid and making decisions without me.
"He seemed like he wanted some, um, alone time," Caroline says, and I nod like I buy her politically correct translation of “Ric is upset about Damon and showing it by being a dick to everyone."
"So were you followed when you got the new cars?" I prompt.
Stefan flicks a quick glance away toward the side mirror, but it doesn't hide his irritation that I felt I needed to ask at all. Whatever. I have no reason to have faith in his villain-dodging skills, and somebody needs to be man enough to point out the fact that we've all been totally sucking at not being spotted. If we act like it's fine, as Stefan prefers to do, then we won't ever get any better.
"Nope," he says.
Caroline rolls her eyes. "You guys, play nice. We're all on the same team here. Jeremy, just so you know, after you dropped us off at the airport, we compelled our way through security to lose whoever might have been tailing us, watched the checkpoint for half an hour to make sure no one else compelled their way through without tickets, then slipped out through another terminal, rented cars, took the employee hallways to the rental car pickup lot, and broke a lock so we could drive out through a service entrance just in case they were smart enough to watch the rental car exit."
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 19
