He snorts and shakes his head, muttering something I didn’t hear.
“What?” I ask, my eyes narrowing.
“Nothing.” He smirks. “Go get the girl, Romeo.”
He closes the door in my face without waiting for a response, and I stand there with his car keys, a bottle of bourbon I could never afford, and about eight hundred bucks in my pocket, glaring in confusion at a motel door with the number 17 stenciled on it.
“Dick,” I mutter, and head for the car.
Chapter 7: Damon’s Favorite Day
ELENA
I hear the zip of a fly being lowered, and hide my flush of pleasure under the spray of the shower as Damon steps in behind me.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, trying to look nonchalant as I turn to face him.
I tell myself I’m used to the sight of him in the shower, all long, sleek muscles under smooth skin beaded with clean water. I have to stop myself before I swallow to ease my suddenly dry throat.
He gives me a lazy smile as his eyes follow the trails of water that trickle down my over my collarbone.
“Oh, it’s more than okay.”
I poke him in the ribs, rolling my eyes. “I meant with Jeremy.”
He takes my hand and raises it, spinning me out of the shower spray with a flourish as he slides into the space I left behind.
“Smooth, Salvatore.” I purse my lips against a smile. “Don’t think I didn’t just notice you stealing the hot water.”
He winks. “I’m known for playing dirty.”
“True.” I cock my head so he knows his distraction techniques aren’t going to work. “Jeremy?”
The corner of his mouth twitches with an amusement I don’t entirely understand as he tips his head back to wet his hair. “Your baby brother’s playing a little dirty, too. With our ex-jailbird, unfortunately.”
My eyes widen. “Wait, I thought they were just rooming together as friends.”
Damon chuckles. “Right, Elena. And I bet when the neighbor boys wanted to play ‘Doctor’ you ran right home and got out your Barbie Princess Band-Aids, too, didn’t you?”
I stick out my tongue at him and hold out my hand expectantly. He reaches out of the shower and snags a disposable razor off the sink for me.
I fumble with the wrapping on a bar of hotel soap, frowning unhappily down at it. “We can’t compel her a second time, can we?”
“We can…” Damon drawls, waiting until I’m finished with the paper before he hands me the razor. “But the longer she’s with us, the harder it will be to wipe all of her memories, especially if we don’t want her to think she’s losing her mind. Besides, she drifted back toward Mystic Falls right away after we compelled her the first time. I don’t think this girl is staying out of the land of the fanged and furry no matter what we do.”
He gives me a knowing look as I turn away and prop my foot onto the rim of the tub, working up a lather over my calf.
“What, like fate?”
“Call it what you want,” he says. “With certain people, that’s just how it is.”
My fingers tighten on the razor and I pause, watching the soap melt in slow trails down my ankle. “We have to tell her, don’t we?”
“We could try not to. I know my brother’s all for keeping her in the dark.”
“You don’t think we can keep the secret, do you?”
“Not a chance in hell.” He shifts a little to the side so the water will warm my back while I shave my legs. “And when we tell Cali, we’d better make sure we keep her away from the sharp and pointys.”
I turn my head to look back at him. “After all those times we compelled Jeremy, I can’t keep this from him. Not if he cares about her.”
Damon’s hand splays comfortingly across the small of my back, his thumb stroking the back of my hip.
“Hey, I never said we should. I’m just pointing out, she’s been a hell of a lot of trouble in the past, and Jeremy’s not much better when he’s pissed off.”
I finish one leg and lather the next, my lips pressed together as I think it over. The longer we wait to tell her, the angrier they’ll be, and rightfully so. But we’ve got bigger problems right now, and we can’t afford them to be mad and drawing attention when the Augustines are so close behind us.
“You know it makes me nervous when you get all quiet and you’re holding sharp objects.” Damon’s fingers play a lazy game of Connect-the-Dots with the water droplets on my back.
My sigh comes out heavier than I meant it to, and I finish the last swipe with the razor and set it on the edge of the tub, turning tired eyes on my boyfriend.
“How do the Augustines keep finding us, Damon?”
“Because we need to ditch the Camaro,” he tells me with a pointed look, and my eyes skitter away. I know he’s right, but I don’t want to give it up. It’s the last familiar thing that we saved from home. “And because the Augustines have a whole box of tricks we haven’t even peeked into.”
Alarm prickles through me, even though I’m safe with Damon under the spray of warm water.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Maxfield already told you they’ve got connections with the police and the coroner’s office. They have some capability of tracking us the old fashioned way, though I can’t tell how far it goes: I made sure they can’t track our cell phones or bank records but they might be using APB’s or satellite imagery.”
“How is that the old fashioned way?”
Damon flares his eyes at me in amusement. “Fine, the human way. But since we’re dealing with a bunch of mad scientists, the new wave of the Augustines might be a lot of things. We know they’re faster and stronger, that they crave vampire blood, maybe even survive on it.”
He cocks his head, a swift movement he does when he’s feeling twitchy.
“But when they had me, they did a lot of experiments, tried to see what other powers they could make me manifest,” he says. “I couldn’t control animals until after my time with them, and I got a lot better at slipping inside people’s minds. The fog was an accident when I…” He pauses, glancing away as tugs me closer and pours shampoo into his hands, my shoulders relaxing as he works it through my hair.
I already washed my hair but it’s easier for Damon to talk if he can pace or fidget or drink. Plus, it feels amazing when the pads of his fingers begin to massage my scalp.
“When I escaped from the Augustines’ prison,” he finally says, “I summoned the fog and it felt like it nearly killed me. I don’t think I would have ever known I could do that if I hadn’t been so desperate. Normally, I can only pull it off when I’ve been feeding on humans. A lot.”
I go still, afraid to consider what could have happened to make him so frightened. He still hasn’t told me what happened when he escaped. What he had to do to make it out. I pause, wondering if he might be ready to tell me now.
“They’ve had half a century to experiment,” Damon goes on, dodging the subject of his jailbreak yet again and I can’t decide if I’m disappointed or relieved. “Their Augustine vampires could be capable of more than we can even imagine, and the fact that we haven’t been able to give them the slip yet isn’t a good sign.”
He turns me gently and tips my head back to rinse my hair, but I open my eyes before the soap is all gone, impatient to see him.
“But the fog couldn’t have been because of your time with the Augustines,” I argue. “Because I can do it, too.”
Damon smiles. “’Cause you’re a badass,” he singsongs, and drops a kiss onto the tip of my nose.
I can’t hold back a grin, the warmth of pride singing up through my chest. “Do you think it came through your blood?” My fingers trace the edge of his pectoral muscle as he smoothes conditioner through my hair. “Because you’re my sire?”
“No idea,” he says. “I’ve never seen anyone else do it. But until I met Sage, I didn’t know vampires could dreamwalk, either. I think there’s probably a lot of shit we could do if we were
taught.”
“I wonder if Bonnie’s old grimoires could give us any clues.” I link my hands behind Damon’s slim waist, enjoying the sensation of him rinsing water through my hair.
“Well, next time we have a few free weeks for dusty book research again, have at it.” He smirks. “You can write the eBook edition of Vampire Tricks for Dummies.”
I sigh. “That doesn’t help us now, though. The Augustines have unknown power and resources and we don’t have the first clue of where to start looking for them. Even if their laboratory is on Whitmore campus, that wouldn’t help us identify all the members, or figure out how to neutralize them.”
He steps back, picking up the bar of soap and starting to lather his chest. My eyes are drawn downward, watching the circles of lather appear over his muscles in a way that invariably reminds me of my eighteenth birthday, when he strolled naked into the living room of the boarding house just to get a rise out of me. Which of course, he did.
“Oh, I’ve been looking plenty. I’m just not finding much,” Damon says, and I’m distracted enough that it takes a second for his words to register.
“Wait, you’ve what?” I frown.
He tosses me the bar of soap and I catch it as he turns his back expectantly.
“You’re spoiled, you know that?” I tell him, a smile tugging at my lips despite the seriousness of the situation.
“Think of it like a last meal. Because once I tell you how I’ve been looking for the Augustines, my chances of getting my back washed by a pretty girl are going to go straight to the firing squad.”
I pinch his taut bottom. “You’re going to be having that last meal sooner rather than later if you have any other girls washing your back.”
He chuckles, deep and low, as I begin to smooth the soap over his wide shoulders. “That’s what you took away from that statement?”
I sigh. “I was trying to ignore the other part as long as possible. Let me guess, you’ve been leaving a trail of wounded vampires like breadcrumbs to lure in the Augustines.”
“Hmm,” he murmurs, his eyes a deep splash of blue as he peeks back over his shoulder at me. “I like the way you think. But no. We got too far away for me to send the raven back and forth, so I started using something a little bigger.”
“Wait, people? But who?”
Damon reaches down and retrieves the razor off the edge of the tub, jokingly flicking it up and over the shower curtain so it’s safely out of reach before he turns back to me.
“Pretty much anybody I can get my hands on,” he says. “At every gas station and truck stop between here and Mystic Falls, I’ve picked up a couple to compel. They’ve searched the entire Whitmore campus and other than some bizarre but unhelpful documents in Maxfield’s office, they’ve found nothing. If the Augustines have any labs or dungeons or member lists, they’re someplace else.”
“You compelled someone to break into Maxfield’s office?” My eyes go wide.
“Yeah, and if you think it’s easy to talk a compelled person through picking a lock, over the phone, with inadequate tools, then you’re welcome to take on the next round.”
“Damon…” I look down and pinch the bridge of my nose, shaking my head as I step a little further out of the water. “You can’t just send people away from their lives. They miss work, people look for them. What if they had kids waiting at home, for God’s sake?”
“Then they should have gotten a sitter before running to the Gas ‘N’ Go.” Damon ducks his head to catch my gaze. “Elena. We’ve got to find the Augustines before they find us. Do you get that?”
I close my eyes, and all I can see is flames. I was so focused on Damon, on getting us out of the boarding house, that the first time I really heard the screams of the dying vampires was in my dreams. He’s right. We can’t let them find us.
“Yes,” I murmur, looking up in time to see his lashes flare in surprise. “I get that. But they’re people, Damon. You can’t just use them like that.”
His expression hardens. “I’d use priests, drone planes, and trained bears if I had to. We’ve got to finish this before they nab one of us, or worse, Silas. If they jackhammered him out of his portable prison, he’d be only too happy to help them eradicate vampires.”
My hands clench and I fight the urge to pound them against the tile walls. I’ll only break something the poor hotel people have to fix, and they don’t need that hassle. Besides, Damon shouldn’t have to pay the bill for me to throw a temper tantrum because of something I can’t change.
“I hate this,” I whisper. “I don’t want our lives to be like this.”
I’m staring down at our bare feet, but I feel his fingers curl gently around the back of my neck, urging me closer.
“I know,” he says quietly, in that voice I swear he saves just for me. “I’m sorry.”
I catch my breath and take a quick step forward, my arms tightening around his back even as his envelop me. I can’t take it when he apologizes, because it takes so much pain to pull those words from my flippant boyfriend. “Don’t be sorry,” I tell him fiercely. “This isn’t your fault.”
I’m braced for him to argue, but he sighs instead and I know he’s thinking about the Augustines in the fifties, and how he managed to miss one in his mission for revenge.
“What if I paid them?” he asks. “Make sure they don’t have kids and give them a pocketful of cash for a couple days of playing super spies?” He snorts. “Shit, if I told them it was for a reality show, they’d probably do it for free.”
I pull my head back, furrowing my brow. “You’d do that? You’d pay them instead of just ordering them to help?”
His shoulder twitches in half a shrug. “It’s not that hard. I’m still erasing their memories, though.”
My lips purse suspiciously, but warmth is spreading all through my chest. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have blown up the second I questioned his methods, and we both would have stormed off angry. A compromise seems too easy.
“That would be good,” I say cautiously. “Better, anyway.”
He presses a soft kiss to my forehead and reaches over to turn off the water. “Let’s go to bed.”
I groan. “Don’t even tell me. We have to get up in like an hour, don’t we?”
“Three,” he corrects, passing me a towel. “Because a certain insatiable siren kept me up all day long.”
I point at him, narrowing my eyes. “Hey, don’t blame me. A certain somebody was parading around without his shirt on, and he got exactly what was coming to him.”
He spreads his arms in all his wet, naked glory. “What, a man can’t undress in his own hotel room without being attacked? I thought this was a free country.”
“If I recall, you attacked me the second time,” I point out with a saucy smile, bending to dry my legs.
“Bows,” he groans, scrubbing a towel carelessly over his head so his inky hair stands up in beautifully spiky disarray. “How in God’s name am I supposed to control myself when you put on panties with those tiny bows on them?”
I laugh, snapping my towel at him. “Damon, pretty much all panties have bows. You ought to be used to it by now.”
“There was lace,” he says, looking disgruntled and a little scruffy because I distracted him before he could get around to shaving the dark hint of stubble gracing his jaw, and now it looks way too sexy to part with. I make a mental note to hide his razor. “It wasn’t fair.”
I roll my eyes. “Poor baby.”
His eyes narrow, and I jump for the door of the bathroom a split second before he reaches for me. I laugh because I can already sense him behind me as I pretend to make my escape, and I’m not running very fast at all.
Our playful chase ends up lasting two rounds around the hotel room and then through a good five minutes of me trying to put on pajamas while Damon tries to take them right back off again.
He keeps me giggling until I am lightheaded, but by the time we are snuggled into bed together and the lights ar
e off, the melancholy has started to creep in again.
In a short few hours, we’re going to be stuck in the car, driving all night again on random roads so that the Augustines won’t have a chance to track us. And after tonight we’ll do it again and again and again because we have no leads and I won’t risk anyone as bait to try to lure them in. And even if we took them by surprise, I’m afraid we couldn’t win.
I nuzzle my face into Damon’s chest.
“Stop brooding,” he murmurs.
“Distract me then,” I tell him, snuggling against the warmth of his bare skin. “Tell me something happy.”
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 9