Sternes had to fight a bit to get the truck back into the center of the road. The right front wheel wasn’t turning as well as it should and he suspected that it had taken a considerable amount of damage, but he didn’t really care. As long as it got them to the plane, it didn’t matter.
He grinned at Wilson. “Piss yourself yet?” he taunted.
Wilson only glared at him.
In the back of the truck, Damon could hear everything. He knew it was Elena following him. He’d recognized the sound of Bonnie’s car, but it wasn’t Bonnie’s heartbeat that accompanied it, or Bonnie’s blood scent. It was all his Elena, and he started cursing under his breath as he realized she was trying to stop the truck. The truck swung back and forth, and Damon rocked from side to side, the legs of the chair nearly coming off the ground so he had to keep shifting his weight to stop himself from being knocked over. His skin was being rubbed raw from the chains and started to bleed as he did, filling the truck with the smell of his own blood.
He didn’t care about that. The rush of fear in him for Elena’s safety had the vervain burning out of him faster than before, but he still didn’t have the strength to break his chains. He wasn’t sure he could even if he had been completely healthy. There was still no slack to give him leverage.
“Elena!” he yelled. “Don’t be a fool!” She could hear him, he knew that, but as he listened to her engine’s volume increase, he realized she’d taken his warning as a reason to try and stop this truck even more. “Damn you, Elena, I don’t need your help!”
He was about to say more, yell out anything he could so as to not have her risk herself like this, even if it was something she might not be able to forgive him for later, but he heard the sound of her car moving up beside the truck and even blind and bound, he knew what was going to happen.
Greedy swerved the truck into the side of Bonnie’s car, and oh, he was going to die painfully for that. Damon heard Elena fighting to keep control of the sedan, but there was too much uneven ground at the edge of the road, and every echo of her car crashing down the side of the hill and into the trees felt as if it were a stab in his heart.
“Elena!” he shouted.
Forget waiting to meet this Jennings person. Damon needed to get free now and make sure that Elena was okay. The universe wasn’t in agreement with the needs of one Damon Salvatore, however, and between his own frantic struggles to free himself and the noise of the truck’s engine, he didn’t know if she was still all right.
She really should have been wearing her seatbelt.
Elena shakily picked herself up from where she’d landed after being thrown through the windshield of the car when it slammed into a gnarled old pine tree.
Her clothes were torn, and her hair was a tangled mess, but she was fine. Elena looked down at herself in amazement, at her dirty, blood-streaked, and utterly undamaged skin. She’d felt pain when she went through the glass, but by the time she finished rolling, it was gone.
Elena let out a long, slow breath. She’d known that vampires were near instant healers for many types of wounds, but to actually experience it was very different and left her shaken.
She clenched her fists. “Get it together. Damon needs you.” She’d heard him shouting her name from the truck’s back. She’d been too focused to make out what he was saying, but there was no way she wouldn’t recognize that voice.
Farther down the hill, she could see the cube van making its way along the switchback road, already a mile away from her and invisible through the trees to all but her supernatural senses. Elena focused on it, letting herself trust that she did know where it was, and with a final nervous glance back at Bonnie’s wrecked car, she started to run.
It wasn’t a race she ever would have hoped to win before. Her running pell-mell down a steep slope through a thick forest, dodging trees and brush while trying not to trip over anything and go tumbling to the bottom, all to catch a truck.
That truck, however, was slow, especially on these winding roads, and she was fast enough to keep up with her own feet as she all but flew down the slope, angling to catch up before they escaped.
What she’d do once she did catch them was something she still had to work out. For the moment, all she could think about was not falling, not tripping over some stupid hidden root and breaking a leg despite the fact she knew she couldn’t, about not getting lost, about that truck reaching the bottom of the hill and racing away faster than even vampire speed could manage.
She came to a break in the trees, a level stretch where the road ran, seconds after the truck passed, headed for the next switchback. She turned her head to look at it, but kept running straight forward, back into the trees.
She really hoped they didn’t see her. She needed every advantage she could get. Rather, she needed every one she was willing to accept. She could feel the blood thirst rising with her rage, demanding she shut off her humanity and just tear into them, making them pay for what they’d done to her and what they planned to do to Damon.
Elena didn’t give in to that. The thought of what that would make her was terrifying, but at the same time, so was the thought of what could happen to Damon if she didn’t. All she could do was to try and run faster, try to catch up to that truck before it got away.
Despite her doubts about whether she could manage it, she did. She reached the road on one of the last few turns before it straightened out into the flat valley ahead of the truck, which surprised her enough to actually manage a gasp that sounded very much like a giggle.
She didn’t have much time to absorb her victory. The cube truck came around the corner and immediately the driver swerved it toward her.
Elena gasped and ran onto the shoulder of the road, around a tree, and back onto the road as the truck went by. The driver had it floored, and she ran as hard as she could, feeling the blood she’d drunk earlier burn through her as she sprinted after the vehicle.
There was a step mounted under the rear bumper to make climbing into the back of the truck easier. Elena jumped onto that and grabbed hold of the side of the truck, where someone had bolted handles at different heights, to make it easier to climb in and out. She suspected, however, that they were normally only used when the vehicle wasn’t moving.
A bare second after she found a grip, the truck started to swerve from side to side, and it was all Elena could do to keep holding on.
Sternes swore as he looked into the wide wing mirrors of the truck. He couldn’t see the vamp, but he knew she was back there, riding the truck like a limpet. If he left the crazy bitch alone, she’d get the truck open and the other one out, and even with the monster’s ring in Wilson’s pocket, it was getting late enough in the day that they might have both of them in the cab with them, and Sternes had no plans to become some vampire’s supper.
He looked at Wilson. “Take the wheel.”
Wilson blinked at him, looking more surprised than Sternes had seen him so far in their short acquaintance. “What?”
Sternes didn’t wait for him to figure out if he was serious. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door. Wilson yelped as he grabbed the abandoned steering wheel, and Sternes grinned as he swung himself out of the cab of the truck and started to climb up onto the roof. Wilson was such a bland, humorless sort, but his veneer was cracking. It’d be fun to see it shatter, give him someone to laugh at on the flight back.
Sternes climbed up onto the roof of the truck’s cab, his thinning hair blowing in the wind that made his eyes squint and water. Wilson had the truck under control already and looked to have the good sense not to slow it down. That was very good. He wanted that vampire too focused on other things to notice him coming up on her.
He was going up from the roof of the cab to the top of the cube shaped cargo section as Wilson took the truck rather awkwardly through the last turn on the hill and the ground leveled out underneath them into a straightaway that would take them to the main road and then the airport. Sternes hung on until it was traveling
straight again before he started forward again, crawling to the back edge of the truck. The truck wasn’t going at anything he’d consider to be speed, but he wasn’t sent out on jobs like this because he was stupid.
He looked over the edge and saw the vampire crouched on the back step, hanging onto the side with one hand and struggling with the awkward length of chain and lock he’d used to secure the door with the other. She hadn’t seen him, and Sternes grinned as he pulled one of his guns out of its holster at the small of his back.
A bullet wouldn’t kill a vampire. It took a stake or sunlight for that. A lot of times, a bullet didn’t slow them down, or it made them madder. However, a bullet straight into the head would make her let go since they couldn’t pull that instant healing crap of theirs if they had something foreign messing with their motor control that their body needed to shuck out first. She’d be up again in minutes, but by then they’d be halfway to the airport, and she’d never catch up.
She still hadn’t seen him. She had to be new to the bloodsucking world, he decided, which made this so much easier. He carefully cocked the pistol and aimed it at her head. It wasn’t the most powerful gun he carried, but he needed the bullet to stay in her head, not travel all the way through.
“Elena!” the vamp inside the truck shouted. “Look out!”
Sternes fired, but the vamp was already moving, swinging in an uncoordinated way that caused her to lose her footing as his shot missed her. She screamed as she was twisted by the speed they were going so she was hanging by one arm with her back to the truck, her butt only a foot off the road and right behind the rear tire while her feet kicked at the pavement. She tried to get them under her, but every time she did, the truck’s momentum just made them fly out from under her again. She was half hidden between the step and rear wheel well, however, which made her an even harder target.
“Elena!” the trapped vampire yelled. He sounded wild with rage.
The vampire kept scrambling to get her feet underneath her as the momentum of the truck twisted her back and forth and she flailed for balance with her free hand. It brought her perilously close to the back tire, but the only clear shot Sternes had at her were those legs. Given how badly they must be being abraded against the asphalt, Sternes doubted she’d even feel a bullet there.
Still, lying flat on his belly, Sternes spread his legs and braced his feet against the top of the truck to keep himself steady and gripped the pistol with both hands. His next shot missed, but she shrieked again, and he hoped it scared her enough to not be able to get back up on the truck.
The truck went around a turn, less sharp than the ones on the hill but still enough to make Sternes glad he was braced as he slid a few inches. They were on the main road now, a four lane deal that passed through exits to suburbia and strip malls before it crossed a bridge and reached the airport. It was flat but also occupied by other drivers, and he cursed this vampire who was too stupid to give up. They were definitely going to be spotted, and someone was going to call the police. Still, they couldn’t be able to respond too quickly in a hick town such as this, and once they reached the plane, they’d be able to drag their prisoner aboard and take off before the cops got there. Just as long as they got rid of this vamp now.
It was too much, too much by far.
Elena was still hanging onto the back of the truck, the crazy woman refusing to abandon him, and that bastard was taking shots at her. He wouldn’t be able to kill her, but to Damon that didn’t matter worth a spitball in the ocean.
He still couldn’t break the chains around him, but the rage and, he’d admit it, the terror he felt for Elena had burned all of the vervain out of his system, and Damon was blood hungry and at full strength.
He couldn’t break the chains, but he could squirm, and while the slack was insufficient for him to use enough force to snap the chains, the abrasion made him bleed and the blood made his skin slick. It also nearly drove him mad with hunger, but Damon focused that madness, using it to ignore the pain while he squirmed and struggled, not caring what joints he tore or bones he dislocated as he fought to free himself from the chains. He was going to slither out of these chains if it took every last drop of blood in his body because he’d see himself damned before he let any more harm come to Elena.
Elena didn’t know if she could hang on for much longer. She kept trying to get her feet under her, but the ground was moving too fast and she was swinging so much she faced backwards, unable to get a hold anywhere with her other hand. If she’d still been able to sweat, she would have lost her grip a long time ago.
A bullet whizzed by her head, and she couldn’t stop herself from letting out another scream. Being swung around like a streamer on a ceiling fan wasn’t perhaps the worst thing that could be happening to her right at this moment, but it was still pretty high up there as far as she was concerned.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Please!” The man hanging over the top of the truck just smirked at her, and that only made her angrier, but she still couldn’t get her feet under her and even as a vampire, this hurt.
A car passed them going in the other direction, the people in it staring at the action happening on the truck in stunned surprise. Elena really hoped they called the police and that the Sheriff showed up fast.
Sternes took another shot, this one grazing her free shoulder with a fresh flash of pain. She couldn’t stay like this. She had to either let go or stop hanging half off the truck and kicking at the road.
She couldn’t let go. Elena took a deep breath and stopped fighting the drag of the street. Instead, she pulled her legs up to her chest and let all the strain go onto her arm. She swung back against the side of the truck, the motion almost gentle now, but she was so close to the rear tire that she could feel it stirring the hair on her arm. If she touched that, she’d be ripped right off the truck.
For a terrified moment, as she hung there banging against the side of the truck like a dangling sack of potatoes, she truly thought that was going to happen and that she’d lose her chance to rescue Damon. The strain was immense, but when the wheel didn’t catch her, she was finally able to bend enough to use her other arm to grab the side bar.
Holding on with both hands, she had the leverage to pull herself up and get her feet back on the step at the back of the truck. She did and looked up in relief, right into the barrel of a gun.
His shoulder was dislocated, his skin ripped to raw hamburger by the chains, and still Damon struggled. The fresh blood made his bindings slick and he squirmed his way out, forcing himself out of their grip until he had an arm free. He could barely move it thanks to the dislocation, but it was enough to get his fingers into the canvas over him and tear it open. He wriggled out through the gap, the slack in the chains enough with his arm free that they weren’t able to hold him anymore. He flopped onto the floor of the truck like a newborn and pushed himself to his feet, much as he would have preferred to rest at least a few moments. Elena didn’t have time for him to waste being weak.
One thing he did give a few seconds’ attention to was his dislocated shoulder, given he couldn’t use it effectively while it was out of the socket, and some types of injuries needed help before the healing could kick in. He turned to the wall of the truck and slammed into it hard enough to dent the metal as he felt the bone pop back into place. The pain was intense, but all it really did was feed the urge for vengeance already boiling in his blood.
Damon’s nostrils flared, and as he turned his face up toward where he knew the man threatening his Elena was, his eyes were blood red and his face creased with blackened lines.
He had her this time. All the flailing back and forth while she was hanging down past the edge of the truck made her a hard target, but she had a good grip now that kept her nice and still.
Sternes didn’t give her any sort of warning that he was going to shoot. It would have been nice and dramatic, but also stupid as hell. He preferred to play his chances when the odds were in his favor, such as consid
ering bribes from a vampire that was chained down, not one that was free and only ten feet away.
He steadied his breathing, his finger beginning to squeeze on the trigger, not pulling. He had one shot now, or else she’d be up on the roof with him and if he were lucky, all he’d be doing was kissing asphalt at 60 miles an hour. He’d take a dive if he had to, but he’d rather just nail her now.
She looked up, her soft eyes startled and frightened, as if she couldn’t quite believe any of this was actually happening, and he had a perfect opportunity to put a bullet right between them.
A hand punched up through the metal roof of the van, fingers crooked like claws as they slammed down and into Sternes’ side.
He screamed in pain and involuntarily dropped his gun. It fell down off the truck past the girl as Sternes tried to pull away from the hand holding him and draw another gun from a shoulder holster under his jacket at the same time. The vamp they’d captured shouldn’t have been able to do this. The vervain was supposed to keep him kitten weak and helpless.
The vampire tightened his grip and pulled again. Sternes couldn’t stop his scream. There was a massive hole torn in his side and his blood poured down into the truck to feed the vampire inside, only making the monster stronger. Sternes heard a low, pleased chuckle and a second hand reached through the hole to dig into his side next to the other one, fingers tangling through his intestines.
Sternes was getting weak, dizzy, and in shock. He still tried to reach his gun, but his hands weren’t obeying him and now the vamp was pulling him down into the truck. The hole wasn’t very big, not more than a foot across, but that wasn’t a problem when he didn’t care how many bones broke in the body he yanked through.
The Vampire Diaries: A Cage of Burning Light (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 6