I'm impressed, but I don't want them to think I wouldn't have thought of all that myself, so I just nod.
“So where are we going?” Stefan asks, heading through quiet neighborhood streets back toward the highway. The Suburban doesn’t follow right behind us. Before we split up to get the new cars, I told them that we needed to stay further apart so if one of us got caught, the other car could still get away. We’ll just have to rely on texts to keep in contact.
“We need a new plan for hiding from the Augustines,” I say. “Staying on the move hasn’t helped us and I think if we keep it up, they’ll figure out we switched cars. We need to hole up somewhere before they get a fix on our new vehicles. Somewhere close enough to Whitmore so we can start to search for Damon, and isolated enough we’ll be able to keep watch for any of the Augustine’s spies coming around. Maybe a really small town, or something.”
“Not a small town,” Stefan says. “We’ll stand out too much.” He pauses, turning on his blinker to change lanes. “Damon used to use this trick with vacation rentals when he was trying to hide from someone…he’d call around to find out who bailed on their reservations at the last second and he’d swoop in and take them, but compel the owner to keep the name the same so he wasn’t traceable.”
“Why didn’t he just compel the owner to write down a fake name?” I ask skeptically.
Stefan sighs and accelerates as if he just realized he wasn’t quite going the speed limit. “Damon has always had this thing about his name. He refuses to use a fake name, not even when he needs to disappear for a while. I think it’s because our father threatened to disown him so many times. Living exactly as he pleases with our father’s name is his weird way of getting back at the old man. But it makes it a lot harder over the years to keep people from realizing you’ve never died, or grown older. Especially with a name as uncommon as his.”
“You know, I think a vacation rental would be perfect,” Caroline puts in from the passenger seat. “There are some like little walled estates, and we could all stay together in one big house instead of taking up a whole floor of a motel.” She glances at Elena and her voice drops. “It might be nice to all be together. At a time like this.”
Elena crosses her arms, her neck steel-cable taut. “Don’t pretend like you care, Caroline. It just makes it worse.”
“Just because Damon’s a jerk doesn’t mean I want him to be tortured by a bunch of freaks in a lab!” she protests, looking wounded. "I want to find him too, Elena, jeez.”
“We could compel the owner to use a fake name,” Stefan interrupts in a pointedly mild voice. “And find a rental with surveillance cameras around the property.”
I open a search window on my phone for vacation rentals within a four-hour radius of Whitmore College. There’s a squeak of windshield wipers and I look up to see a light rain streaking the windows.
"Look, staying hidden isn't enough," Elena says impatiently. "We need to find Damon and either figure out how to rescue him, or call the Augustines and make some kind of a deal."
"No," I say firmly before she can say another word. "Listen, how many times has one of us been kidnapped? And we always rush into a plan to save them and end up giving up all our leverage or we take on people we have no business trying to fight and every single time it blows up in our faces. I'm not doing that again," I tell them. "We're going to be smart about this. Besides, if they wanted to kill Damon, they could have staked him at the bus station. And one vampire said they were supposed to take him alive. Which means we have time to outsmart them."
"Of course they didn't stake him!" Elena explodes. "Because they want to torture him, to make him pay for what he did to the Society back in the fifties. They probably want to experiment on him and turn him into one of their sire-bonded freaks!" Her voice wrenches and she dissolves into tears.
My shoulders sag and Caroline reaches into the back seat to squeeze my sister's knee.
"They can't sire bond him to anyone, Elena," I mutter. "He's already a vampire."
"Yeah, but they can make him feed on vampires and you don't know what that would do to..." Her voice contorts into sobbing until I can't even tell what she's saying anymore.
Caroline gives me a narrow-eyed look and unbuckles her seatbelt, gesturing for me to trade places with her. She climbs over the wide console and I slip past her into the passenger seat, feeling like dirt. But Damon wouldn't want Elena to put herself in danger to save him, and that's exactly what she'd be doing by trying to contact the Augustines and bargain with them.
Caroline wraps her arms around my sister, pulling her into a tight hug. Elena blows out an unsteady breath and hugs her friend back, her eyes squeezed shut. She looks like she’s had absolutely as much as she can take for one day.
"I don't understand why we're arguing," Caroline says. "We all want the same thing, and we already have what the Augustines want more than Damon or any of us: Silas." She takes a deep breath. "And I can't believe I'm saying this, but why don't we take his head, concrete the rest of his body into the coffin and hand it over? Even if they figure out a way to heal him back together to get his blood, he can't mind-control anybody without a head, right?"
"Wow," Stefan says without inflection, slanting a look at Caroline in the rearview mirror. She sticks her tongue out at him, and a faint smile crosses his face. "That was a very disgusting and very creative idea, Caroline, but even without his head, Silas is a powerful tool. Do we really want to give the ability to cure all human disease to a secret society with a super strong vampire army who can also compel anyone who stands against them? With just those two things, they could exert a lot of control over humans and vampires alike."
"Okay, actually, Stefan's right," I agree. "And like I've been saying, I don't think we should give them Silas. Not any piece of him. But they aren't the only ones who have a super strong vampire on their side."
"Ric," Stefan says, braking softly for a traffic light.
I nod. "He can rescue Damon. All we need to do is figure out where they're holding him, and the best way to sneak in."
Elena says something that's garbled by sniffling. Caroline finds her a tissue and she blows her nose, raising her swollen dark eyes to mine. A guilty ache throbs behind my sternum.
"Damon left his phone behind," Elena says. "He's been compelling humans to scout around Whitmore looking for clues about the Augustines. As long as we have his phone, we can have them keep spying for us." She bites her lip, fingers shredding the tissue in her lap. "I thought we could pay them for helping us, when this is all over."
More compelling humans? Don't they ever get tired of messing around with people's lives? I can see by Elena's crestfallen expression that she knows exactly what I'm thinking and I can't decide if paying them really makes it better. I mean, it's not like they're agreeing to help.
"It's really smart, actually," Caroline pipes up. "If they're human, the Augustines won't hurt them if they get caught." She gives me a level look and I turn back around, frowning at the front window.
But she's right.
"All right," I tell them, going back to the search on my phone for vacation rentals. "That's where we'll start."
I can't help but sneak a small look into the backseat, and when I see my sister's expression, I try to dig up a reassuring smile for her because I know she's thinking about Damon's face, the day he told us about what the Augustines did to him, and with her eyelashes still spiky with tears, I can't pretend I'm not thinking about it, too.
"We'll get him back, Elena," I promise.
She nods furiously, and her eyes sparkle with fresh tears, but she smiles back at me anyway.
* * *
The next morning, when I dump my suitcase onto a bed, it’s not in a motel. I found us a vacation house on a walled, heavily wooded property with enough cameras to make it a voyeur’s paradise. It’s in the forest, but built Mediterranean-style with a courtyard opening in the center and benches around a gently burbling fountain crisscrossed with leafy
strands of shade.
Cali would have loved it.
I didn’t even take the guitar she left me out of the SUV because I can’t look at the courtyard without picture her playing there.
I yank off my tee shirt and toss it across the room, letting it hit the wall and fall there. No point in staying packed because we’re not going to have to leave in a few hours. No one followed us here and as long as we stay out of sight, we’re home free for a while.
I zip open my duffel to get some fresh clothes and that’s when I see it: Cali’s iPod, ear buds neatly coiled around it, lying right on top of my hastily folded jeans. When I click it on, the screen opens to show the artist name Aperture, and an album name I don’t recognize. My fingers squeeze tighter.
The second, unreleased album. It has to be.
There are only four tracks.
I plug in the ear buds and jab the button so eagerly that it sticks for a second. In the first track, there are no drums. Nothing but guitar, her smoky alto and some dark bass that comes in late and low.
I sink down on the bed, and as I check the name of the song, I see the date across the top of the screen. October 13.
It’s my birthday.
I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry because I got the album I’ve been waiting forever for but I’m also back to only being able to hear Cali Jameson through my ear buds. And it hurts so much more now that I’m in love with more than her voice.
* * *
DAMON
When I wake up, the first thing I notice is the handcuffs. They’re twice as thick as the kind the human cops use and they’re biting into my sacrum. I shift with a groan so I’m not lying on top of them anymore.
The second thing is that my body is heavy with an aching kind of sting, like I drank a poison ivy smoothie before going a few too many rounds on the sparring mat with Ric. That’s wrong: I should be waking to the sandpaper-over-nerve-endings tingle of a healing spinal column, not a vervain hangover.
The third thing is that I’m in the Twilight Zone.
Under my cheek, the couch upholstery is a smooth peachy-beige and as I blink blearily I see that the carpet is industrially short and dyed in mild variegated colors: the better to hide the kind of nasty spills you expect in a doctor’s office. The room is heavy with the unmistakable odor of Yankee Candle’s best attempt to make wax smell like baked goods.
The other heartbeat in the room is slow.
Too slow to belong to a nice human receptionist who could provide both a tasty vervain hangover cure and a burst of strength that might be enough for me to break out of these suped-up handcuffs.
But I forget all about blood when I sit up and look to see who is guarding me.
Lia leans forward in her chair, a grin breaking across her face with the warmth of pure, sweet sunlight.
I blink once, then twice, and then I check my whole body for the burn of werewolf toxin because this is one serious acid flashback I’m having.
Without waiting for me to speak, Lia bolts across the room and pulls me into a tight hug, burrowing into my neck with a happy little gasp that sounds like my name. My arms twitch as I try to reach for her and remember that I’m cuffed.
Over fifty years since the last day I saw her and yet her hair smells exactly the same. It makes me dizzy like I’ve stepped into a past life, into a version of myself that I hardly recognize anymore. Even after a thousand days in a damp, stone-walled cell, her hair always carried a hint of warmth, as if she just stepped out of the sunshine. I inhale it now with tears stinging at the back of my eyes that I’ll be damned if I’ll let her see.
She reaches back and releases my handcuffs with the small click of a key and I let them dangle carelessly from one wrist as I pull away and catch her shoulders, my eyes darting between hers while I check for the flaws that will tell me this is a dream someone is sketching into my mind. She kneels in front of the couch, her eyes an uncannily clear grey-green, with a single fleck of black in the right iris that I had completely forgotten about. If someone is creating this dream for me, they’re damned good.
“Lia,” I growl, “tell me right now that those mad scientist idiots didn’t find a way to create clones or some other crazy bullshit, because I am sick of doppelgangers like you wouldn’t believe.”
My old prisonmate rolls her eyes. “If I were a clone, would I tell you I was a clone?”
My mind feels like it is racing jet fuel fast and is frozen concrete still at the same time.
Cloning duplicates genetic material, which means tattoos and scars aren’t reproduced because they aren’t carried in the genes. I grab her hand and shove up the thin, soft material of her sweater. She doesn’t resist, just waits quietly while I inspect the angry red circle of an old cigarette burn just above the crease of her elbow, given to her by the man who would later turn her into a vampire. The man she would one day kill.
I look up at her and she beams at me, her eyes a little damp. “How,” I say, my voice so raw it doesn’t even sound like me, “in the fuck is that possible?”
Lia ducks her head, using her key to unlatch my second handcuff. “That’s a pretty long story. Sorry for the cuffs; they wouldn’t leave me unguarded with you without them, because they um,” she says and clears her throat, “weren’t exactly sure how you’d react when you woke up.”
“They’ve had you for fifty-seven fucking years?”
The math is throbbing through my head; years dividing into months, weeks into days, days into hours into minutes that remind me of every long night we spent talking through the bars of our cells half a century ago, during the imprisonment that felt like my whole life and was less than a tenth of what she’s suffered.
She takes my hand, our fingers finding each other the way they used to, palms clasped and her thumb cuddled around mine, as if she needed to hold on just a little bit tighter to the only thing we had to reach for.
I can’t stop staring at her, at the face that I thought was long since buried.
Her father was Israeli and her mother an Irish Buddhist, so Lia ended up with an explosion of obsidian black curls, skin like the inside of an almond, and a personality that is all serene sweetness spiked with a fierce hunger for the kind of righteous war that changes the world.
She looks healthy: happy even. Her cheekbones don’t stand out as hard as they used to, so they must have given up and started feeding her a decent ration of human blood somewhere along the line.
But wait, no, Maxfield said that the Augustines could live on vampire blood now. Which means every drop that’s rounding out her cheeks and making her hair so shiny has been wrenched out of a fellow vampire’s veins. The thought makes my stomach kick violently, and as happy as I am to see that she’s alive, I don’t want to touch her anymore.
I pull my hand out of hers, sitting back on the couch of this bizarre waiting room and crossing one ankle over my knee, wriggling my toes inside my boots as if to remind myself that my body is my own, that I’m alive and it’s 2011 and no one has cut into my eyes for decades.
I make my posture casual, but the act can’t touch the rest of me, and I don’t even try. Lia would see through my bullshit anyway, just like she always has.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I tell her, my voice so serious it scrapes in my throat.
She’s still here because I left her behind, all those years ago. Because I let her stay to try to save everyone, when I only wanted to save myself.
Her face softens. “Don’t worry about me. I’m safer here than anywhere else on earth. It’s different now, Damon. Let me show you.”
My throat twists like someone just crammed a screwdriver into my trachea. Safe? With the Augustines? Did they finally perfect the brainwashing they were screwing around with all those years ago? Or has she just been here so long she can’t imagine any other way to live?
Then again, she’s not exactly in prison stripes: her well-tailored slacks and cashmere sweater are pure Lawyer’s Wife Casual and she even has a litt
le charm bracelet around her wrist. My eyes narrow in confusion and I shake my head, trying to throw off the last of the vervain grogginess.
Lia rises to her feet, taking the handcuffs with her and opening the door across the room. “This is just one of our meeting rooms. Let me take you to your room.”
I try not to hesitate before I look to what’s beyond the door, but my throat catches on memories of bars and damp stone walls scratched with the initials D.S.
Instead, it’s something more like a high-end spa. I step over the threshold, my footsteps strangely muffled on the smooth bamboo floors as if they’re acoustically buffered from beneath. The main room is littered with soft couches and lounge chairs in smaller groupings, though there are only a few people in evidence right now, two talking and one girl sketching with charcoal pencils who looks up to watch me pass by. I toss a mocking air kiss her way and she frowns slightly until Lia gives her a comforting smile and a little wave.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 20
