He hangs up and the engine purrs as we nose right up to Matt’s rear bumper. The backseat brightens as the headlights behind us come in close. I throw my arm around Cali’s shoulders and pull her down toward the middle of the seat until both of our heads are below the line of the backseat.
“What are—” Cali starts but Damon interrupts her, popping open the button on Elena’s seatbelt.
“Kid’s right,” he says. “That isn’t the cavalry behind us. It’s the lynch mob.”
He urges Elena down onto the floorboards of the passenger side, his fingers squeezing her shoulder gently before he lets her go.
I flinch and brace for impact as Matt’s brake lights come on, but Damon spins the wheel and we go left just as Matt goes right, our bumpers so close my brain is already playing the crash of folding metal before I realize we’ve made the turn and we’re rocketing off onto a side road I didn’t even see.
My arms tighten automatically, cradling Cali against my chest as we huddle awkwardly in the backseat, our seatbelts still tugging at our lower halves while our torsos tangle together in the middle.
Light slaps into the car from behind us as the car makes the turn right along with us. Damon’s eyes are fierce on the rearview mirror.
“Text the quarterback to keep on zigging and zagging all the way to the end zone,” he tells Elena. “He’s home free for now, and we can pick him back up once I’m done with these clowns.”
“Keep your head down,” Elena hisses, tugging at his jeans. “If they start shooting, you’ll crash before you can heal.”
He frowns, but scoots down a couple of inches.
“We should have swapped out the Camaro, not just the plates,” Cali mutters. “It’s a freaking ’69. It’s not exactly incognito.”
“Yeah, but could a rental do this?” Damon asks, and smiles.
He cranks the wheel and we fly off the asphalt of the country road, sound exploding into the car as we hit the gravel of a long driveway going about thirty miles per hour more than we should. Lights flash and then steady as the car behind us follows us right into the turn and my stomach flips when the Camaro starts to slide sideways.
Elena screams.
I don’t know if it’s from being in way too many car crashes or if it’s something directly embedded in my Y chromosome, but I know the exact instant when we cross the line between a fish tail and a full-speed spin. We’re not going to pull out of this one.
Cali’s hands fly out to brace off the back of the seats and all my muscles clamp taut as I huddle around her body, like I have a chance in hell of protecting her from the crash we’re headed into.
The Camaro swaps ends and then so fast I almost don’t follow it, Damon jags the wheel just a touch the other way and we’re straight again, rocketing back toward the road we just came from. There’s a flash of light to our left as we pass our pursuers and then we’re back on the pavement.
The roar of the engine fills my whole body as the speedometer climbs and I feel Cali suck in a shaky breath. They might be able to follow us by the sound alone, but they’re going to have a hell of a time catching us. I risk popping my head up, still holding Cali as I watch out the back window.
“They’re turning around,” I report.
“Elena, I need you to breathe,” Damon says in a low voice. “We’re fine, everything’s okay.”
I glance back up between the seats and Elena’s eyes are squeezed shut as she huddles on the floorboards, her fingers digging into the passenger seat. I wince. She’s been in even more car accidents than I have, including the one that killed our parents. But there’s no time to deal with that. I look behind us again.
“They’re back on the road and following us,” I say, glancing around for somewhere we can hide.
We’re starting to pass more driveways now, leading to the farmhouses on this remote section of road. Other than our headlights, it’s completely black, too far from town for anybody to pay for streetlights. But there are no other roads to turn off on. What if this is a dead end?
“Keep your damned head down, Jeremy,” Damon snaps. “I’ve got a rearview mirror.”
I figure they’re too far behind us right now to bother shooting, but Cali yanks me down before I have a chance to argue.
“Hold on.” Damon hits the brakes. The tires yelp as we turn sharply into one of the driveways with thick, flowering hedges to either side of us.
“Jesus, what are you doing? We’re going to be trapped!” Cali shouts. “Damon, we can’t fight those things, are you out of your freaking mind, keep going!”
He flips off the engine and the lights before we’re even fully stopped. “Quiet,” he bites off and I hear Elena gulp in a frightened breath. “Stay down,” he orders us.
With the lights off, we’ll look like just another car in a driveway. But the Camaro’s taillights are distinctive, and they saw us turn left. They’ll be looking for us and we’re just sitting out here in plain sight.
My heart speeds until I can barely breathe, my body screaming at me to take Cali and my sister and sprint into the trees before the Augustines get here.
Damon closes his eyes, fingers clenched tight on the steering wheel like he’s trying to bend it with his bare hands. What the hell is he doing?
My eyes dart toward the door handle and then widen as I see fog boiling out of the woods and pressing up against the windows of the car, moving fast like there’s a wind behind it, but thicker than fog could ever be unless the night was dead still.
“What the—” Cali says under her breath and I touch her lips to remind her to be silent. One of her hands grasps my arm and holds on tight.
I watch, frozen, as mist envelops the whole car until I can’t see anything.
The gloom of the fog turns white as the first hint of their headlights filters through and my whole body is tense, absolutely still and poised to run at the same time. I wish I would have unlatched our seatbelts so we could be ready to escape but now it feels like if I move a single muscle, they’ll hear me, though I know that’s impossible.
The air brightens until the windows hurt my eyes, light ricocheting off the water droplets in the air though it’s still so thick I can’t see any shapes beyond the mist. The headlights bear down like a fist closing around our tiny, inadequate hiding place.
And then everything goes dark as the car speeds past, the relief almost painfully sudden.
“Damon?” Elena whispers, moving back up into the passenger seat.
He’s sagging against the steering wheel, slitted eyes blinking sluggishly as he turns in the direction the car went. The mist outside the window swirls in a pale grey cloud that grows steadily clearer until the sharp lines of the hedges surrounding us come back into focus.
I glance around for a better hiding place, my heart already ticking down the seconds until the Augustines realize what we’ve done and circle back. The driveway is lined by hedges and low brick walls heading straight to a garage. We could break the door, but if there are cars already inside, we’ll still have nowhere to go. But if we pull back out, they’ll see our taillights right away because this road is straight as an arrow.
“Damon, you have to hide us,” I tell him urgently. “They’ll be back and the fog is already fading.”
His eyes slip closed and he shakes his head, so faintly I almost don’t see the movement. He licks his lips and when his voice comes out, it sounds dry.
“Can’t. Didn’t really have enough human blood in me to do it the first time. Those party tricks are the pricy kind.”
I can see the faint glow through the hedge from the Augustines’ fading headlights, and as I watch, it flashes, changing direction. Either they’re looking into each driveway, or they’re turning around.
“You’re a vampire, too,” Cali says to Elena, shoving a hand through her hair as she follows my gaze down the road. “Fucking do something!”
“I can’t control fog like Damon can,” Elena protests.
Damon’s eyes open, an
d they focus on her face, though he’s so pale I think his grip on the steering wheel is the only thing holding him up.
“You can,” he tells her, and swallows painfully. “It’s just like when I taught you compulsion. You take all your will, all your determination and you pour it out of you like it’s the only thing that exists, like it’s the only thing that matters.”
Elena closes her eyes, and the headlights brighten, fully turned our way now. In the growing glow, I can see every crease in her forehead as she concentrates. But I can also see every leaf on the hedges surrounding us, and not a hint of curtaining fog.
“I can’t!” she bursts out, her eyes popping back open frantically. “Damon, we have to run, I can’t do it.”
“Elena,” he snaps, the sound like a slice opening in my flesh. For one second, his eyes catch mine and then he looks away, dropping his voice as if that will keep me from hearing what he says next. “They’re faster than us,” he tells her, the words taut with urgency. “We can’t run.”
Cali pops her seatbelt and slings her messenger bag over her shoulder, stuffing my notebook inside it so she’s ready to bolt, even though she must know they’ll catch her. She doesn’t look afraid, but then she reaches for my hand and squeezes so hard that the bands of her rings bite into my fingers. I close my free hand over her knuckles, wishing like hell I could do something, anything to make the next few moments safe for her.
Damon reaches out and his palm cups my sister’s face.
“Focus.” Every line of his face is taut. “It’s not magic, Elena, it is survival. It’s just like compulsion, because it allows us to confuse our prey, or to vanish when we’re being chased. It’s meant to protect you.” His whisper drops into something almost pleading and I want to look away, the sound is so private. “To protect your family.”
She closes her eyes.
It’s already too late. The glow of the headlights is growing and any second they’ll pass our driveway. Elena doesn’t have time to gather the fog again, even if she knew how.
The weapons are locked in the trunk, but my muscles tighten anyway. I’m a Hunter and I will fight the Augustines until my last breath.
I look at Cali, her eyes stark in the terrifying beams from the approaching car. I wish I could kiss her, could pause this and steal one moment to tell her I wanted to be more in her life than I got the chance to be.
“Run,” I tell her instead, hissing the words under my breath so I don’t scare my sister. “When they get here, run as fast as you can and we’ll draw them off.”
“Jeremy—” she starts to say but then the light breaks into the driveway, the intense glare stealing the color from her face until all that’s left is the jagged burst of intense blue that edges her shrinking pupils.
My head snaps toward our enemy automatically, but through the back window all I can see is the blinding luminescence of the encompassing fog and my thoughts are screaming with wordless surprise that somehow, Elena pulled it off. And then grey steals back in, shadows expanding through the car as the Augustines sweep by, unaware.
My mouth falls open and I stare out the back window. They were going so slow this time, they must have seen the strange cloud obscuring the driveway. Unless the fog does more than that, misdirects their attention or makes them see what they expect to see, like some kind of visual compulsion.
“Elena,” I gasp. “You did it. Holy shit, you actually did it!” I turn to her, a grin taking over my face but she’s slumped in her seat. “Elena?”
My eyes widen and Cali lets go of me to lean into the front seat and check on her. Damon’s already there, his shaky fingers stroking Elena’s hair away from her face as he shifts her so she’s propped more comfortably against the door.
“She’ll be fine,” he says, but he’s barely more conscious than she is. “Call Stefan. Tell him to bring blood, however he can get it.”
I start to offer mine, but Damon’s eyes are falling closed and suddenly I get what he didn’t say. We’re humans, in a car with two nearly-starved vampires. I trust them to stop and not to hurt me, but I’m not stupid. There’s no way I’m going to bring out fresh blood around them when Cali’s trapped in the backseat.
I pull out my phone and text Stefan, trying not to think about how he is going to have to bring "blood." It doesn't exactly come vacuum-sealed around here, and so far we've been able to keep Cali from having to see the realities of how vampires feed. I lean into the front seat when I'm done and unease flickers through me as I see both Elena and Damon are unconscious. Maybe that’s safer, at least until Stefan gets here, but I’ve never seen a vampire exhausted to the point of passing out before.
"That," Cali announces, "was the weirdest shit I have ever seen, and these days? That's saying something."
"Welcome to my life," I say with a soft chuckle that feels scratchy in my throat.
I look up to find her watching me, her hair messy from her nervous fingers and eyes luminous in the darkened car. But something about her expression makes my words hang between us like a line we just crossed together.
I swallow, wishing she'd touch me again, that I had the distraction of her soft skin and hard jewelry to ease the tense moments before help arrives, but I'm not sure what she'll do if I take her hand.
I wait, and she doesn't reach for me. But she doesn't look away.
Chapter 5: Blunt is the New Sexy
JEREMY
I lean my forehead against the tile to steady myself, the water starting to go cold where it rains down from the cheap hotel showerhead. I barely even notice because in my mind, it’s all steam and slick skin.
In my imagination, Cali’s in here with me, my shoulders pressing hers into the wall while her eager tongue steals drops of water from my lips. The tile is foggy and warm as I flatten a palm against it, wishing I knew how she likes to kiss. Deep and wet and uninhibited, or quick and teasing with a flirtation of a bite to get my heart pounding…
I shudder out an unsteady breath at the thought, and the door to the bathroom bangs open.
I reach for a towel before I realize I should reach for a weapon instead. By the time I realize my mistake, the shower curtain rattles aside and I’m left blinking stupidly at punkish layers of blue-streaked hair and light eyes, narrowed in an expression that there’s no way I’m reading correctly.
“Cali? Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” I yelp, the towel bunching in all the wrong directions as I try to wrap it around my hips and keep the important parts covered all at the same time. “What’s wrong?” I ask, digging deep to find some functioning brain cells. Cheap pornos aside, there’s only one reason she’d bust into the bathroom while I was in the shower and that’s if we were in danger.
“Nothing,” she says, and crosses her arms impatiently. “Unless you count that I’m sexually frustrated to within half an inch of spontaneous combustion, which is not in any way helped by the fact that I know you’re in here, not wearing any clothes.” She looks expectantly at me as if waiting for a sympathetic nod. “No. Clothes. At. All.”
I duck my head, sputtering, though there’s not a chance in hell of me ever coming up with the right words for this conversation. The water splashing down on my feet is now icy cold and it’s the only sound in the room.
She takes a step back and leans a shoulder against the doorframe, dropping her head sideways against the wood with a soft thud as her eyes fall closed.
“Blunt is not sexy, Cali,” she chides herself, and thumps her head one more time for good measure. “See, my hormones are poisoning my logical thinking processes. I can’t be trusted,” she complains, opening her eyes and then looking guilty when she takes in my expression.
I should say something.
Right.
“Shit.” She bites her lip. “Shit, shit shit.” She throws out her arms, letting them slap to her sides. “Look, Jeremy, I’ve never been all that great at the flirting game. I either go after the guy I want, or I run the other way. I don’t really do the coy little ad
vance and retreat, plus we’re stuck in cars with your whole fam-damily like 90% of the time and all stressed out and—” She shoves her hand through the loose layers of her hair, looking up at the ceiling as a small laugh coughs out of her.
I can’t believe she just walked in when I was fantasizing about her. I am such an asshole.
“And ironically, this is the most free time I’ve had since I was your age and the fact that you’re supposed to be seventeen but the catty, immature bitch down the hall is five hundred still just breaks my mind and—” Her chin comes back down and she narrows her eyes at me, almost accusingly. “I like you.”
Wait, is she saying she’d like me but I’m too young?
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 6