My shoulder joint impacts concrete as I sprawl onto the ground and I blink rapidly, trying to clear my stinging eyes enough to see where we are. There is a narrow staircase leading up to ground level, the opening at the top still partially blocked with whatever was disguising it from the outside world. So that’s why Lia took me this way: that hallway probably dead ended into what looked like a maintenance room, but actually was a secret emergency exit in case something ever went wrong in their earth-toned, yoga-matted little bunker paradise.
Katherine’s face appears above me, her hair half pulled back in a ponytail, half whipping free in the wind, blackened with the ash that’s falling out of the smoke that pushes up the staircase and toward the sky. She’s holding a shovel and tears stream down through the soot that covers her cheeks, but I can’t tell if it’s from emotion or just the poisonous air down here. Her whole body shakes with coughing but she’s trying to speak anyway.
“Tried…find you…caught…scientist tried to stop…Had to…So sorry…couldn’t…”
I can hardly make out one word in ten and I don’t have time to hear whatever left her trapped outside, trying to dig her way back in. I flip over, my body a bloody and partially scorched ruin that obeys me only reluctantly. Katherine's waist feels tiny and breakable in my hands as I shove her up the stairs, the shovel falling from her fingers.
I stagger to my feet and turn back for Lia, but she’s cringing in the shadows of the stairwell, the flames already visible through the hole where we climbed out.
“Go!” she shouts. “The barn over that way, it’s actually a garage. Get the panel van and you can come back for me.”
She’s terrified, the bloodshot whites of her eyes visible all the way around the irises. Burning embers are starting to whoosh out of the pile blocking the doorway behind her but she can’t go more than two steps forward before the late afternoon sun slanting down the stairs would catch her.
“Damon get out of here!” she shrieks, fresh tears filling her grey-green eyes.
I don’t stop to think about her voice in the labs for the last week, or the bars and bricks that used to separate my cell from hers. I just rip my shirt off, its plastic buttons soft from the heat as they rain down onto the ground. I toss the shirt over Lia’s head and push her up the stairs.
“Keep your hands covered,” I order, and then I’m guiding her into the sunlight, her hands clutching tightly at the fabric. I can hear her breath hiss in as the sun starts to bleed through all the places where the fire burned tiny holes in my shirt. We reach the top of the stairs and suddenly we’re in the long grass of a meadow bordered by trees, the roof of the Augustines’ underground hideout.
Katherine’s waiting for us, her eyes wide as she takes in the craters in the meadow billowing smoke from where pieces of the roof have caved in.
I spot the barn five hundred yards away, barely visible through the smoke that’s thick even in the open air, but not dark enough to block Lia’s vulnerable flesh from the killing sun. It’s too far for my tattered shirt to protect her while she’s running blind and far too slowly.
My legs already feel wobbly, weakened by the dozens of injuries my body is trying to heal, but I boost Lia up over my shoulder and start to run, knowing without looking that Katherine will follow as fast as she’s able.
With Katherine's instincts, every bone in her body would have to be broken before she would fail to run for safety, and I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that she was trying to break back into the building to get to me, even after her original rescue plan so obviously failed.
When we reach the barn, I don’t even try the knob to see if it’s locked. I just turn the shoulder that isn’t supporting Lia and bash my way straight through, the weak wooden doorjamb exploding into splinters.
I stumble, dropping Lia to the floor less gently than I intended to and then just staying bent over, bracing my hands against my knees as my body sways dangerously. My burned skin itches as it heals and my lungs feel scratchy and torched from all the smoke and fire suppressant chemicals I accidentally inhaled. Blood and ash streaks all of my clothes and I slowly shake my head, trying to register the fact that the wooden walls around me are cool to the touch. Safe.
“I have spent way too much time running from fires in the last two years,” I complain. “I am going to move to a tiny island, with no trees on it, surrounded by water. Cold water,” I decide, wiping sooty sweat off my face and glancing disgustedly at the gore and grit smeared across my hand.
Katherine bursts through the door behind me, panting and coughing as she leans weakly against the wall of the barn.
“Okay?” is all she manages to get out and I lift an eyebrow at her as she hacks unattractively, clutching her stomach in a vain attempt to ease her body’s rejection of all the very un-nourishing substances she’s inhaled in the last hour.
“Yeah,” I finally answer her. “I’m fine.”
She, on the other hand, needs a doctor since vampire blood no longer heals her and that is just one more complication that I don’t need today.
Lia’s clawed my shirt off her head and is lying flat on the ground, her breathing stuttering with pain while her skin begins to smooth away the blisters left where the sunlight reached her.
I glance into the garage and sure enough, there are neat lines of cars. Stepping closer, I see keys dangling helpfully from ignitions. The side of the barn that faces the distant highway is regular, weather-beaten wood, no different from any other aged outbuilding in the rural parts of Virginia, assuming that’s where we still are. But the part of the barn that faces back into the forest is lined with wide, automatic garage doors so the cars can leave easily.
Except none of them have. Whatever Katherine’s setup was before the fire, it worked. No one escaped the fate she planned for them, not even Dr. Maxfield and the other humans who should have been free to run outside. My stomach lurches weirdly at the thought of those vampires all packed into doorways, terrified eyes darting between the flames and the gentle but toxic glow of the afternoon sunshine outside.
I push the image away. They all left me to burn. The least I can do is return the favor.
But that doesn’t mean I want to hang around thinking about it, especially since I can hear faint sounds from the direction of the fire that I don’t care to focus on too much.
Lia must hear them too, because she pushes herself to her knees, shoving her wild curls out of her face.
“Hurry, Damon, there might still be time! If you get the panel van, we might be able to get some of them out. I can ride in the back and tell you where the hidden entrances are, and where the ground is solid and safe to drive on. If you drive right up to them, they could get from the building to the van before the sun can do too much damage.”
I feel the tug of instinct that wants me to obey, and I look away from her so I can resist, trying to reason it through. She needs me to drive because she can’t do it. There’s a special kind of glass that blocks UV enough for vampires to sit right behind it, but no one ever bothers putting it into cars because one fender bender and poof! You’re up in smoke and the cops have a very suspicious corpse on their hands. Of course, Katherine could drive but Lia never trusted her, even though she doesn’t know it was Katherine who set the fire.
I hesitate, glancing to Katherine, who is still clinging to the doorway, her watering eyes coming back to me in between bouts of coughing. She can’t speak but I can read the tension in her shoulders, so I know that she’s waiting for me to deal with Lia so we can escape together.
I let out a slow breath, crossing my arms.
Suddenly, I have nothing but choices.
I can take the van keys and save the Augustines, the minions of a society that burned my home, kidnapped me and tried to eat my family. And yeah, I’ve been a soldier so I get that they were just following orders. I know the ones who came to the boarding house are already dead and I know exactly what kind of agony the rest of them are in right now, with flame
s burning their flesh even as it tries to heal, prolonging their suffering until the last possible moment when they give in to final death.
I can push Lia back out the door into the deadly sunlight and escape with Katherine, who really did try to save me just like she promised. Her plan for the future of the Augustine vampires sounds insane, but I’ve also been around long enough that I know she’s right. I can read the signs in the news, in the weather, in the numbers. With this population, the food won’t last and without food, peace won’t last. The world in the next few hundred years is going to become a very uncomfortable place, even for vampires. I wouldn’t even have to get my own hands dirty to stop all that. I would just have to back away and let Katherine finish the job she started. I bet for old time’s sake, she’d even give me a free pass on becoming one of her Captain Planet Approved cannibal vamps.
Or I could reach over and snap Katherine’s neck. For every time she’s ever hurt me, and my brother, and Elena, and Jeremy. For every innocent human she is going to kill so she can go to her grave satisfied she made a difference.
I glance at Lia and as soon as I do, a wave of protectiveness floods me. I want her away from here, and safe. She’s my oldest friend and now that we’re free of the other Augustine leaders, I’m sure she’d never force me to do anything I didn’t want to. I’ve been a prisoner here for five days. She could have done the procedure to addict me to vampire blood within the first hour, but she didn’t, because she knows how I feel about it. And she let me out of my cell.
This isn’t a simple right vs. wrong. It’s a choice between women who have both let me down, and who both came through for me when it counted. It’s a choice between their imperfect but well-meaning visions of the world they want to create.
This is my call to make. Elena will never know what happened here today and for as often as I’ve tried to be the better man for her, this is too important to just do what she would think was right. I’m older, I’ve seen more than she has, and I understand all the consequences far better than she ever will. And more than that, these women are my past. We shared things that Elena was never a part of.
Whatever I do now, I have to live with it.
I make my decision, and I move.
Chapter 23: Coin Toss
JEREMY
Brakes squeal behind us, and a horn blares.
We’re close enough to the fire now to glimpse the flashing lights of fire trucks through the trees. The SUV is losing speed and I realize my foot has slacked off the gas pedal. Cali squeezes my arm, rumble strips on the edge of the highway protesting as I finally remember to guide the Suburban onto the shoulder.
The side door of the SUV slams open and I jam on the brakes, glancing back at the explosion of movement in the backseat.
Caroline hauls Stefan back away from the door with a grunt of effort and Ric turns to help.
“Think, Stefan,” Caroline orders. “Damon probably set the fire himself so he could escape and he’s long gone by now. Or—”
She stops herself almost immediately, but I still flinch at her implication.
“Either way,” she continues with a catch in her voice, “if it’s been burning long enough for the trucks to be here, there’s nothing else we can do.”
He stops struggling and sags in her grip.
“Shh,” is all she says, but she holds him fiercely and I know she’s afraid to tell him it will be okay.
“Elena,” Ric prods gently. “Say something.”
My sister’s eyes are huge in a face the color of ash, the blue and red flashes of the emergency lights chasing each other across her skin. She hates sirens, I remember, ever since the accident.
“The last thing he said to me was that he’d be back,” Elena whispers, and Cali sucks in a jagged, sympathetic breath. “And Damon hates to make promises.”
There’s a click as Cali slides the gear selector into Park for me and nudges my arm, nodding toward the backseat. I think I catch the glitter of tears in her eyes, but she looks away before I can be sure.
I get out and move around the hood even though I can’t feel my feet. Ric climbs out the side door so I can get in, and then I’m pulling my sister into my arms.
“He can’t be dead,” she whispers. “Not Damon.”
“He can’t be,” I agree, my chest threatening to tear wide open with the absolute sincerity of my words.
I haven’t been surprised by death for a long time. Somewhere along the way, I just started to expect it, stopped thinking anyone was immune. But Damon’s just too damned mean to die. I always figured if some spell gone wrong took out the whole world, Damon would be left reclining on the ashes and smoking a stolen cigar, cursing at the cockroaches and bitching at Stefan for checking out early like a pussy.
“If he is– Jeremy, if he is I don’t think I can…Jeremy, I can’t–” Elena stutters, her tears spilling over onto my shirt.
“Elena?” Caroline says, a note of alarm in her voice, and I remember what she told me about the day my sister flipped her switch.
My grip tightens with sheer desperation. I can’t let her do that again. If we aren’t able to find Damon, no one else will ever be able to trick Elena into turning her humanity back on.
“Don’t,” I whisper, dangerously close to begging. “Please, ‘Lena. Please don’t.”
My sister shudders against me, and vaguely, I hear Cali say, “We’ve got to get them away from here before someone sees us. Do you want me to drive or are you up for it?”
“I’ll do it,” Ric says, and the side door slams.
I tuck Elena’s head under my chin and press a hand flat to her ear to muffle the sound of the sirens, my throat tightening when her tears dampen my skin.
“Hang on,” I murmur to her. “For me,” I tell my sister, bending close so she’ll hear me over the roar of the engine as Ric pulls out. “Hang on for me, Elena. Please.”
The hour’s drive back seems like it takes an entire decade of my life. I murmur empty reassurances to my sister and stroke her hair, even though that makes me feel weird, because I’ve seen Damon do it and the motion seems to calm her down. And that way no one will notice my hands are shaking, too.
Damon Salvatore cannot be dead.
And if he is, I honestly don’t know how any of us will ever be okay again.
I don’t notice we’ve arrived at the vacation rental until the headlights go out, and the sudden silence of the engine is an ending I’m not ready for.
No one moves until Caroline clears her throat and says, “I bought tequila.” Her voice is subdued, like she can’t muster the energy for even her most artificial perky tone. “It’s in the house.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Ric mutters, and Cali pops her door open in unison with his.
I start to shift in preparation for lifting Elena into my arms, but she surprises me when she sits back and wipes her eyes, straightening her shoulders.
Cali pulls open the side door for us. “Everybody outta the damn car,” she prompts. “It is Beer Fucking Thirty, no matter how you count it.”
I slide out, but before I can turn back to help my sister, Cali leans in and passes Elena a handful of cocktail napkins.
“If your boyfriend was really in there,” she says baldly, “I bet he torched a ton of those Augustine bastards before he took off.”
Elena’s chin lifts a fraction of an inch and I hold my breath, waiting for her to explode, but instead pride gleams in her watery eyes. “Fiancé,” she says.
Cali smiles. “Fiancé,” she agrees, and grasps Elena’s free hand to pull her out of the SUV.
Elena pauses to blow her nose on a cocktail napkin and then they head for the house together. I pretend to check my phone when Stefan gets out, because I can’t stand to meet his eyes right now. To my surprise, Caroline hangs back with me instead of following him.
She touches my arm, and when I look up, she’s obviously been crying, too. “I know everybody thinks I was reverse sire bonded to him or wh
atever,” she says, her lower lip trembling, “but I never hated him, you know?”
I don’t pretend to understand half the stuff that has gone on between Caroline and Damon, but I nod hastily anyway and reach over to pat her shoulder. “I know,” I insist. “But we should get inside.” I can tell by the stricken look in her eyes that she doesn’t think he made it out and I don’t want to hear her say it.
She nods, and as we get to the front steps, I hear Elena’s phone ring. I break into a run, and get inside just in time to see her pulling the device out of her pocket.
I slam to a halt, and my sister says through tight lips, “It’s Katherine.”
“Oh screw that,” Ric bitches. “Not today.”
“No,” I interrupt, striding forward. “Let me answer it. She hasn’t called since she took off. If she’s contacting us now, she knows something.”
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 30
