“Now that the human’s all patched up and freshly refilled.” I flare my eyes in Cali’s direction. “I don’t mind if I do.”
Jeremy gives me an annoyed look. “Not cool, man.”
“Just try it, Sparky,” Cali says dryly. “I’d kill you just for that car, and at least this way we can call it self-defense.”
She balls up her bandages and makes a three-pointer with nothing but net in the trash can beside the entrance, and then pulls open the door and heads inside with Jeremy following along behind.
I frown, letting go of Elena and taking a quick step forward so I can smack him in the side of the head for his lack of manners.
“Ow,” he complains. “What was that for?”
I just shake my head. “Kids these days.”
Caroline waves her hands to draw our attention to where she’s had the staff set up three tables end to end to make room for all nine of us.
“Did it go okay?” she asks Cali. “I know it can be a little…icky.”
Cali smiles wryly and drops into the seat next to her. “It wasn’t the way I was hoping to lead into breakfast.”
“Here,” Caroline says, digging in her purse for a breath mint. “It’s citrus, not mint.” She drops her voice. “Covers up the copper flavor a little better.”
Cali takes it with a bemused look. “And I thought my friends were strange.” She pops it into her mouth anyway. “Thanks.”
Elena grabs a spot on the end and tugs me down next to her. Stefan takes the seat between me and Katherine without comment, which is probably for the best. Jeremy sprawls into the chair across from his sister and next to his little girlfriend, still looking irked at my impromptu lesson in chivalry.
“Is it really safe to stop here?” Matt asks, his eyes bouncing nervously around the too-bright dining room.
“A better question,” Cali says, nabbing a menu from the stack in the middle of the table, “would be is it safe to go any further without providing Cali with pork products. And the answer? Definitively not.”
Katherine gives her a disgusted once over that looks like it weighed her out at five pounds over the limit even though I’d bet that little pixie is a digit or two beneath Katherine’s own dress size.
I rap a knuckle so Donovan will lean forward enough to see me at the other end of the long table, and then I point to where a stout, grey-haired waitress is lowering the shades so we won’t be blinded by the sun starting to peek over the horizon.
“None of our little friends last night were wearing rings,” I tell him. “Which means our drive time just got switched to night shift for the duration of this road trip.”
“A lack of bling,” Cali mutters into her menu. “Tragic.” Jeremy snickers, and she shoots him a look from underneath her eyelashes. “Bacon or ham steak?” she proposes. “I’m fresh out of coins to flip.”
He looks at her like she’s out of her mind. “Both.”
She smiles and snaps her menu shut, folding her hands on top of it, the rings on her fingers clicking together decisively as she trains the stripped-down intensity of her pale blue eyes on me.
“Look, I told you about my grandma’s situation, and I really appreciate you guys offering to set up care for her, but it’s just not that easy.”
“I already did,” Elena interrupts, her brown eyes soft. “While you were getting clothes for us earlier. It’s Compassionate Care, the best agency in town. They’re staffed twenty-four hours a day and you can call whenever you want with more specific instructions. They had her, um, on file already and they said her insurance will cover it.”
“Right,” Cali says, looking a little uncomfortable for once.
Elena smiles hopefully, and Jeremy’s eyes bob back and forth between the two of them.
“The thing is,” Cali says, lowering her voice as if that will make a conversation at a table of eight strangers more private, “those places don’t always do the best job.”
Elena’s face falls and I swallow a sigh. When we had Cali stuck in the basement, she was whiny as hell about the grandma, which is why Elena compelled the best standard of care in seven countries and two commonwealths into the nurses at Compassionate Care. My girl may be like the battle-hardened spirits of Valhalla risen again when you threaten her family, but she has the tender heart of a preschool teacher when it comes to shit like this.
“Yup.” I nod and Cali’s eyebrows shoot up at my agreement.
I signal the geriatric waitress for coffee. Swear to God, if she doesn’t get here in the next two minutes I’ll feed her my blood just to give her a little spunk and speed up the service. Her husband’s Viagra prescription can thank me later.
I give Cali an artificial smile. “That’s why I called another agency and made sure we’d have an extra nurse on staff at all times. They’re from competing companies.” I give her a wink. “People do better when they know they’re being watched.”
Cali’s mouth falls open slightly.
“You made me call,” Ric protests from the other end of the table.
“I was driving. Safety first. Besides, I gave you my fake credit card number and my fake phone to do it, so I don’t think a little gratitude is out of the question,” I complain.
In my bag of tricks in the trunk I always keep an untraceable credit card and a bundle of cash, and tonight that’s coming in very handy. The only thing left I haven’t used yet is extra bourbon and vampire killing weapons, and I hope to remedy that in short order.
“It’s not a fake phone,” Stefan says. “It’s pre-paid. And speaking of that, the phones we got all of you are limited to—” I tune him out when he starts talking numbers, and cast a look around for the damned waitress.
I finally spot her headed our way with the coffee pot, but we’re going to have to put her on a moving walkway if we want caffeine before Christmas.
Leaning back in my seat, I close my eyes tiredly. Elena reaches under the table, her slim fingers walking their way inside the loose curl of mine. I snap my hand closed, a smile tickling the corner of my mouth, and she tugs playfully, pretending to try and get away.
“Were the new phones really necessary?” Katherine asks. “What are the chances that a bunch of amateur hunters have the skills or connections to trace our locations based on our cell phones? I think somebody’s been watching a little bit too much Arrow.”
“Wait, you’ve been watching Arrow?” Jeremy snorts.
Caroline leans back in her chair and folds her arms. “Have you seen the abs on that show? Even my mom’s been watching it.”
“Of course she has. It’s not like there’s anything else to do in Mystic Falls,” Katherine says.
“So move,” I tell her.
Stefan sighs. “Can we stop talking about abs and make a plan, please?”
“I think we all need to get some sleep,” Elena says, and squeezes my hand pointedly.
My eyes pop open and I give her a narrow-eyed, affronted look. I can drive all day and still be fresh for fighting by sundown and she knows it. I was just resting my eyes.
She just smiles. “There’s a motel down the road from here, and with the sun coming up, the Augustines will be stuck inside for long enough that we can relax for a while.”
“Before nightfall, we need weapons,” Ric says. “My stash in the trunk of Damon’s car isn’t enough. Plus, we need more concrete.” He tosses me a significant look and I curse and scrub my hand through my hair.
The grey-haired waitress chooses that moment to arrive, rapping me on the top of the head with bony fingers armored in the best costume jewelry ten bucks can buy.
“We don’t use that kind of language in this establishment, young man,” she rebukes.
Jeremy’s eyes bulge and he stuffs a fist against his mouth, his cheeks puffing out as he tries to hold back a guffaw. Stefan grins cheerfully and I scowl at him.
“Yeah,” Ric puts in. “Respect your elders, punk.”
Elena’s fingers twitch in mine with silent laughter but whe
n I look over at her, she bats her eyelashes innocently.
The waitress gives Ric an approving smile and a nod, whipping out her order pad with a speed her feet haven’t seen since the disco ball days. “Normally I begin with the ladies, but today, I think we’ll start with you, honey.”
Ric winks at me and orders pancakes.
I swear I could feel my fingernails start to grow in the time it took for the geriatric waitress to repeat everyone’s orders through her dentures, pausing to "sweetie" and "honey" each of us individually. Except for me, of course.
And once Stefan smiled at her, it was all over because he reminded her of her grandson Willie and of course there’s never been such a dear and sweet boy in all the history of the world and she had to tell us his life story from his first dirty diaper. And I just bet he visits lots when Granny’s got fresh, uncounted tip money in her purse. I roll my eyes as she totters back toward the kitchen.
“So when I said a plan, I didn’t mean for tonight. I meant for how to stop the Augustines,” Stefan says, looking uncomfortable and obviously ready to stop being the center of attention.
Caroline clucks her tongue. “Ooh, that’s not what I’d expect from a ‘dear sweet boy’ like you.”
Stefan gives her an annoyed look and she giggles delightedly, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. When Elena doesn’t join in, I glance over and find her eyelids drooping. She’s barely going to last through breakfast, if that.
“Yeah.” I push away from the table. “I’m going to go get us rooms for the night. Or day. Or whatever. As for a plan, that’s 1-2-3 easy. Find out who they are, find out where they are, then get a one-day rental on a wood chipper and plenty of diesel. Problem solved.”
I bend my head to leave a kiss on Elena’s knuckles, tucking her hand back into her lap before I stride for the door.
“Um, he’s not serious, is he?” I hear Cali say uneasily behind me.
I straight-arm the front doors out of my way and take a deep gulp of air, the rising sun easing a little of the tension out of my shoulders.
She has no fucking clue how serious I can be when it comes to keeping the Augustines away from my family.
Chapter 2: Communist Revolution
DAMON
My omelet is waiting, and it’s still hot enough to steam when I come back and drop five keys in the middle of the table.
“That’s all the rooms they had left. We’re gonna have to spoon,” I sing song, winking at Elena.
“Who says I’m letting you in my room?” she says, lifting her chin. “I hear your kind has cooties.”
I smirk, and then turn back to the rest of the table. “Ric gets his own room. Everybody else has to share,” I tell them, and pick up my fork.
That little counter girl out behind Jack in the Box was good, but blood will never have anything on the fluffy texture you can get out of a well-made omelet. And what this place lacks in atmosphere and service, it apparently makes up for with a half-decent hand behind the spatula.
“Why does he get his own room?” Katherine pouts.
“Because he’s even more likely than you are to kill us in our sleep,” I remind her with an artificial smile. “Plus, he snores.”
Cali gives me another one of those stop-talking-like-a-crazy-person looks, but they’re getting milder from overuse.
Ric narrows his eyes at me in a half-hearted glare. “Thanks a lot, dick.”
I blow him a kiss with a flare of my eyes and snap off another bite of omelet.
“Cali’s the one who should get her own room,” Jeremy says, his eyes darting from her to the table and back up to me. “She doesn’t really know any of us well enough to be roommates anyway.”
“She can stay with me,” Caroline says, flashing her a smile. “Us girls have to stick together.”
Katherine sighs. “Fine.” She turns and bats her eyelashes at Caroline. “Ladies night at the spa, then?”
Caroline gives her an incredulous look. “Um, no. I said girls, not heartless, manipulative vipers. You killed me, remember? Not great for the beauty sleep.”
Cali pauses halfway through a bite of bacon, both eyebrows jumping as she looks to Jeremy for confirmation. He shrugs, a little sheepishly, and nods. She gives her bacon an odd, miserable look, then appears to change her mind and eats it anyway.
Katherine leans back in her chair and folds her arms irritably, the cottage cheese and bowl of fruit in front of her still untouched. “Looks like we’re having road trip déjà vu, then, boys,” she says to Jeremy, then winks at Matt with a touch of a smile bouncing back onto her lips. “Though you don’t have to sleep on the floor if you don’t want to, Matty.”
Matt blushes, his shoulders hunching as he wolfs down another huge bite of hashbrowns.
“Um, yeah, no,” Jeremy says. “That’s not happening.”
I should make him put up with Katherine, since he was the one who forced me to take her on this whole damn trip, but the look of betrayal that flashes through her eyes when she glances away from him is way too sweet to waste.
“Aww, don’t worry, Katherine,” I pout in mock sympathy. “You can still sleep with your old friend Silas. There’s plenty of room in the bed of the truck.”
She pushes back from the table, holding up her hands. “You know, I didn’t ask to come along on your stupid joyride. I have better things to do than eat in greasy diners and stay in threadbare little motor lodges.”
“Yeah, like watch Arrow,” Jeremy pipes up. “Over and over and over again.”
Caroline snickers and Elena smiles at her from across the table.
Katherine’s face hardens into an expression that used to mean she was about to snap someone’s neck, but now that she’s human, it just means she’s in a snit. I lean back in my chair, enjoying myself too much to even bother eating. Maybe Jeremy was right: bringing Katherine along will make an otherwise irritating road trip all the more entertaining.
“You can just YouTube all the workout scenes, you know,” Jeremy goads.
Cali points her fork at him with one arched eyebrow. “And you know this how, exactly?”
“Workout tips,” Jeremy says. “Guy’s got a hell of a routine.”
“Uh-huh,” Cali says, unconvinced.
Jeremy’s ears start to redden under her scrutiny and Matt chokes a little on his coffee as he starts to laugh.
“You know what?” Katherine slaps her hands down on the table in preparation for announcing whatever dire ultimatum she thinks she’s in a position to enforce. My grin widens in anticipation.
“You can stay with me,” Stefan says, and every head at the table turns to look at him. He clears his throat and forces a tight, unconvincing smile. “Katherine, you can have the other bed in my room. Okay? We don’t all need to start fighting on the first day.”
“Oh,” Katherine says, smoothing her face, but not quite quickly enough to hide the fact that she was as surprised as I was by the offer. Her lips curve up into a seductive smile, which usually curdles my appetite, but today it does the opposite as I watch my brother go a little green around the gills at the sight. “Won’t that be fun,” she purrs, and Stefan’s polite smile twitches and freezes into place.
“Hero hair, to the rescue!” I singsong, grinning at his pained look.
It’s almost worth it to have burned my house down just to see my brother’s martyrish tendencies bite him in the ass so thoroughly. Who knows? One night with Katherine Pierce, and he might be cured for good.
I take a smug sip of coffee and Jeremy catches my eye, nodding pointedly toward my left. I tense automatically but when I look over, Elena’s fine, her chin nodding toward her chest and her hands unfurling softly in her lap as she dozes beside me.
Something in my chest squeezes sickly as I remember her scream when the Augustines pulled me away from her, her bare skin flashing beneath the limbs of her attackers. I try to salve the memory with the sight of her now, so relaxed at my side that she feels safe enough to go to sleep right out
in the open.
But even that doesn’t ease my mind, because I have eight other people to keep alive and for all I know, the Augustines already have their human allies out combing the state for us.
“Well, kiddies, it’s been fun,” I announce, flipping our one untraceable credit card toward my brother and picking one of the room keys off the table. “Make sure the waitress has good memories of us.”
His lips tighten at the thought of more compulsion but he nods, his eyes flicking away as I bend to lift Elena into my arms. She’s so used to me carrying her to bed when she falls asleep in front of the fireplace at the boarding house that she doesn’t make a sound when I pick her up. The geriatric waitress smiles at me, apparently finally forgiving me for my earlier profanity, and shuffles over to hold the front door for me.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 2