The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3)

by Michelle Hazen

  The ear bud appears above my face and this time I take it, scooting down so I’m lying flat and then shifting a little closer to her so the wire will reach. The music is already playing and the opening violin is like a smooth curve pouring into my ears.

  I close my eyes.

  Her shoulder presses against mine, and the round little cap of her deltoid muscle makes a firm cushion so she doesn’t feel bony like most girls do. It’s nice.

  I should probably get up and shower, especially if she’s going to be lying so close to me. But this song is really good and my body feels heavy against the bed.

  Probably I should say something to break the silence, since we barely know each other and we’re lying practically in each other’s arms. But I fall asleep before I can think of what to say.

  Chapter 3: Crossbow Special on Aisle Seven

  STEFAN

  I’m supposed to be shopping, but my hands feel heavy and reluctant, the idea of new things almost repellant in a way I don’t care to examine.

  “Recurve bow?” Damon proposes, offering me one from the rack of weapons in the sporting goods store we’re currently browsing. “The only crossbow they have looks like something made for a snot-nosed brat to shoot squirrels and his kid brother with.” He eyes it warily, and the disgust in his look is enough to tease the corner of my mouth into lifting slightly, despite my mood.

  “I guess I’m glad Father never got you a crossbow when we were boys, then. The slingshot was bad enough.”

  Damon snorts. “Pansy. I only shot you with acorns. Could have been a lot worse.”

  “Slingshots!” Ric snaps his fingers. “That could be a decent grenade substitute. If we could get our hands on some vervain we could load it into small glass jars, or even stoppered test tubes since the glass would break more easily.”

  “Or water balloons,” Cali puts in, looking up from studying a display of hunting knives. She smiles quizzically. “Though I’m not sure I understand why honesty-inducing herbal remedies are your weapon of choice.”

  Caroline told me she filled Cali in on a lot of things, but it keeps surprising me when she pipes up with insider knowledge of our world.

  “Ric, you’re thinking like a—” Damon cuts himself off before he says human. He rolls his eyes instead. “We can throw them as far as we want. We don’t need slingshots.”

  “Vervain doesn’t force us to be honest,” I explain to Cali, keeping my voice down so the owner of the sporting goods store doesn’t overhear. “It just makes us unable to compel humans or enter their minds. And if we touch the herb, or water infused with the herb, it burns us. That’s why—” I cough, trying to cover the gap as I realize at the last minute that she doesn’t remember fighting Damon for the vervain in the foyer of the boarding house. She doesn’t know anymore how he hissed with pain when he took it from her, because I erased those memories.

  My stomach twists with guilt for compelling her and I’m distracted for a moment from the aching loss of all my possessions, from the images of my journal pages twisting and crackling black under the flames, the melting case of my first record player, the Bon Jovi cassette tape Lexi gave me. The way the flawless paint must have blistered on the vintage Porsche I’ve babied all these years.

  “That’s why you put it in grenades,” Cali says, thinking she’s finishing my sentence. She frowns. “Why don’t you just use pepper spray? It’s easier to find, and it works just fine.” She shrugs. “Wears off kinda fast on the Augustines is all.”

  Ric looks at her, interested. “That’s not a bad idea. I think I saw bear mace a couple of aisles over. You should grab some.”

  “I’m not going to pepper spray the Augustines like a skittish soccer mom in a parking garage,” Damon scoffs.

  “Why not?” I ask him. “It has the same effect as grenades.”

  “Baby Bro, only you would think that something you can buy in pink to match your handbag is the same as a grenade.”

  I cross my arms and quirk an eyebrow at him, amused. “Oh, so you’re embarrassed? Don’t worry, brother, those of us who are secure in our masculinity will do what needs to be done. You can stand in the back and look cool in your leather jacket.”

  “I’ll look plenty cool enough standing over a pile of bodies while you’re busy shouting ‘No means no!’ and trying to make them cry about it,” he sneers.

  Cali snorts with laugher at our bickering and Ric gives her a long-suffering smile in solidarity.

  “Come on,” I tell her lightly. “Want to help me destroy my masculinity by buying bear spray?”

  “Absolutely,” she says, still snickering at my brother.

  “Don’t let him get sidetracked in the shoe department,” Damon instructs her. “Stefan does love those sensible pumps.”

  “You’re the one wearing heels.” She tosses a glance at his new motorcycle boots. “Don’t worry,” she tells him sotto voce, “5’9” is a perfectly respectable height.”

  “He prefers to call it five nine and a half,” I say with a knowing smile in my brother’s direction.

  He narrows his eyes slightly at me in his “Yeah, you’re not the funny brother” expression, but all he says to Cali is, “Easy on the judgment there, munchkin, or I’ll call Santa and then it’s right back to the sweatshop with you.”

  I shift my weight subtly so I’ll be in the middle if one of them loses their temper, but Cali just grins. “I’d have gone with the Oompa Loompa joke myself. Goes better with the hair.” She flicks a finger at her bright blue streaks.

  Damon winks cheerfully. “Noted.”

  I shift my jacket on my shoulders, glad he didn’t choose today to get sensitive about his height. He and Cali have been getting along surprisingly well since Jeremy brought her home, in stark contrast to the days when she Tasered him and he threatened to burn her house down. Apparently the difference in their introduction made all the difference in their relationship, and I can’t help but hope it might work out the same for me.

  I touch Cali’s back, steering her toward the aisle with the bear-strength pepper spray and she moves ahead of me with surprisingly long strides for her size. I catch up in front of the display, and she’s frowning at two different brands. I take advantage of her moment of inattention to finally let myself just look at her, because I’ve been trying to keep from staring all morning.

  She’s wearing black leggings and another tight tank top today, but she has a long, soft sweater over the top in a midnight blue that is open in the front and drapes gracefully as it skims the edges of her hips. Instead of her normal combat boots, she’s wearing black ballet flats that expose the tops of her delicate feet and give just a peek at the valley of her toes in a way that’s surprisingly seductive.

  She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear as she examines the label on one of the cans. “Do you think we want to maximize area of spray, or distance of spray?”

  “Depends,” I consider, snapping my eyes away from her and back to the can. “Does it work through clothes?”

  She peeks up at me, her lips quirking into an amused smile. “Strangely, they don’t address that on the packaging. Must not be an issue for their target audience.”

  Right.

  I try to cover my embarrassment with a mock serious face. “Those nudist bears. Those are the ones you generally want to mace, anyway.”

  “They get so fresh,” she teases, playing along. “All the waggling. And the growling.”

  I chuckle, unable to help myself. She smiles, and I swallow nervously, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “So, you said you were in a band,” I venture. “Do you miss playing with them?”

  “We’ve only been gone a day,” she reminds me, and I glance away, feeling like a complete ass. “But yeah, generally any time I can’t play I miss it like most people would miss an arm or a leg.”

  She sets the mace down and looks back at me like she’s waiting but I can’t think of anything else to ask her about the band so I clear my throat slightly and say, “
So, how are you doing with all this so far? Being on the run, I mean.”

  She catches the edges of her sweater and wraps them around herself in a way that makes her look small and cozy and huggable. Her eyes skitter away from mine toward the display shelves and she shrugs. “You know. It is what it is.” She bends down. “How many cans of this do you think we need?”

  I scrub a hand over the back of my neck. Apparently my small talk skills are a little rusty. “Probably as many as we can get.”

  We both gather an armload of cans and I look up when the cowbell on the front door jangles obnoxiously and Jeremy pushes through, letting the door crash closed behind him. He pauses when he sees me and Cali, but then blinks and heads for Damon’s aisle instead.

  “Matt and I got wooden dowels, knives to whittle them with, more concrete mix, a couple of buckets, and those Co2 cartridges you wanted,” Jeremy says to Damon as we approach. “Do you really think we can get what we need for Ric to build more stake shooters? I mean, he’s going to what, do it in the backseat of the truck?”

  Jeremy’s gaze wanders toward us as we head his way and then he moves swiftly, catching a wobbling can on the top of Cali’s stack before it falls. I tense automatically at his speed. Sometimes I forget how agile he is since he became a Hunter.

  She smiles and blows a strand of hair out of her face. “Thanks. Something tells me you don’t want to drop those too hard.”

  “Yeah, that could hurt a little if it hit the trigger,” Jeremy says and glances down at her flimsy shoes. “Your feet look nice. In, um, those shoes, I mean.”

  Damon rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath.

  Cali’s brows rise and she stares at Jeremy, a slow smile spreading across her face as a flush creeps over his. And then she bursts out laughing and he has to catch two more cans before they fall to the floor.

  “Jeez, you don’t have to mace me for it,” he protests, starting to chuckle too, even though his neck is turning a deep red.

  “That was possibly the most awkward compliment I’ve ever gotten in my life.” She grins.

  Jeremy stops laughing, staring down at the three cans of bear mace in his hands, and for a second I feel sorry for him, even though deep down in my gut something twists hard at the thought that he’s the one who made her smile, not me.

  She stretches up on her toes and presses a quick kiss to his cheek as my hands tighten on the load in my arms. “It was sweet,” she tells him, her eyes sparkling. “Now, will you do me a favor and go grab me a shopping basket to put these in before I accidentally mace myself?”

  “Um, sure,” he says, clearing his throat and hurrying back toward the door.

  Damon and Ric share an amused look that for some reason pisses me off.

  “What?” I say, and it comes out like a challenge. Damon smirks, but before he can speak, Katherine saunters around the corner, her high heels clicking loudly on the industrial tile that’s more used to hiking boots.

  She clucks her tongue at me. “Better loosen up before you break something, Salvatore,” she says, nodding at the cans I’m gripping far too tightly. “Could get messy.”

  Jeremy comes back with the basket and Katherine snatches it from him, joggling my arm so my whole load of mace cans falls in and then shoving the basket back into his hands.

  “Hey!” he protests, and Cali frowns at her.

  “Rude much?” Cali says, her arms still full.

  “Honey, when you look like this, you don’t have to be nice,” Katherine purrs distastefully.

  “Or useful,” Damon puts in. “Or bother with pesky things like a soul.”

  She gives him an eye roll and grabs my hand, tugging me along behind her. “Come on, lover, help me pick out a gun.”

  I yank my hand away from her too-soft skin, but follow along anyway because right now I need to be somewhere far away from Cali and her clear, happy laugh and Damon’s knowing eyes.

  “Why?” I complain. “You know I don’t know anything about guns.”

  The salesman already has a full selection of handguns laid out across the counter and Katherine smiles at me, trailing her nail slowly down the barrel of a semi-automatic like it is something far more sensitive.

  “Yeah, but all this cold, hard metal gets me hot and bothered and I might need…” She leans close, breathing the words into the hollow just beneath my jawline. “…a little relief.”

  I stare stonily over her head at the bearded, middle-aged salesman, whose eyes are bugged out like he’s about to witness a scenario straight out of Penthouse letters.

  I take her shoulders and push her firmly away. “Keep your hands on the things you can buy, Katherine.”

  She pouts, but there’s a gleam in her eyes I don’t like. “Come on, Stefan,” she murmurs, her eyes sliding sensually down my chest and into my lap in a way that makes me want to step behind a display table just for a little extra cover. “You used to know how to have fun in bed. Not like last night when you just…went to sleep.”

  The salesman clears his throat. “Um, I’m going to uh, get a little registration paperwork started for you folks for your purchase today. You just holler if you have any questions, okay?”

  “We’ll do that,” I tell him, wincing slightly. “Sorry.”

  Katherine perks up, her shiny lips curving into a genuine smile. “Are you apologizing for me? How cute.”

  “I went to sleep because we’re sharing a hotel room, not a bed.” I pin her with my eyes. “Just like I told you. And if you push it, you really will be sleeping in the truck.”

  She tilts her head dismissively, running her hands over the arrayed guns in a way that’s inexplicably sexual. I find myself shifting uncomfortably, and hoping to God my body cooperates right now. It’s been a long time for me, and the last thing I need is to give Katherine any ammunition for her sexual manipulations.

  “Just tell me one thing.” She picks up a pistol, popping the magazine out and racking the slide to check that it’s unloaded in a series of quick, practiced movements. She brings it up in a perfect double-handed shooter’s stance and sights at the far wall.

  “What?” I ask tiredly.

  She drops the gun back down, cocking her hip in my direction as she smirks, her eyes dark. “If your brother and Elena weren’t here to judge, we’d be having a lot more fun, wouldn’t we?”

  “Nope,” I say honestly, and put on a smile just to rub it in.

  Katherine lays down the gun with a decisive click of metal on glass.

  “Have it your way.” She steps closer to me and lowers her voice. “Go ahead and deny that there’s still an attraction between us. No one believes you.”

  My eyebrows climb and I shift back from her but she has me pinned between a display counter and her eyes, which are serious in a way that is hard to look away.

  “You and I have seen a lot of the same years,” she says, her voice a little scratchy when she’s not forcing it into a seductive purr. “We’ve both done things we weren’t proud of and I know you would die before you’d let anyone compare you to me, but think about this, Stefan.”

  She tilts her face up to mine, and I freeze.

  “Damon and Elena may love you,” she says quietly, “but they judge you all the time. They need you to be in control, and to drink just enough of the right type of blood from the sources that they’re comfortable with. I don’t need that from you. And I won’t judge you,” she says, urgency ringing in her tone. “If you don’t want to be with me like you were before, okay. That’s your call and we can both satisfy our needs elsewhere. But after all this time, Stefan, would it really hurt so much to be my friend?”

  I can barely look at her. There’s a vulnerability to her that hurts like a fist in my chest, no matter how hard I try to hate her. The last time she spoke to me like this was when we worked together to kill Klaus, and then gave it all up to save Damon.

  I think those might be the only two times she’s been her real self with me.

  And that’s w
hat makes up my mind.

  I duck my head until I’m close enough to brush a kiss over her temple, but I don’t touch her when I whisper, “Yes, it would. Because you’re Katherine Pierce and you hurt people. It’s kind of your thing.”

  She flinches, actually flinches, and the cow bell on the door rings abruptly as Caroline and Elena breeze inside. Caroline is holding a pad of paper, a shopping bag is draped over her wrist and she’s reporting to Ric before she even reaches him.

  “I got leather, and awls, and the special needles that you…”

  I close my eyes, focusing on Caroline’s voice for the second I need so I can prepare myself to push past Katherine without looking down at her. I have to remember that I don’t care if I upset her. She uses everyone around her, all the time, and it’s better this way.