“You mean other than you?” I retort immediately, but my voice is weak with the realization that I could have ruined the entire rest of my life when I hesitated to break her neck.
And suddenly, I’m glad to not be alone with the choices that have to be made.
I cross my arms and bump Ric’s shoulder with mine. “Thanks for coming.”
He snorts a disgusted sound, like I just said something incredibly stupid.
I glance down, avoiding his eyes, and notice that Lia’s pants are twisted, rucked up over her ankle so her sock and a hint of her shin are showing, and something about it just looks pitiful to me.
I should stake her myself just to prove my will is my own. But somehow it feels like killing her would prove exactly the opposite. I tug her pants down into place.
“Ric, I can’t…” My voice goes thin and I have to clear my throat. “Because of the brainwashing,” I finish quickly. “I can’t be here when you do it.”
“Yeah,” he says, sneaking a sidelong glance at me. “Of course not. No problem.”
The carpet rustles under my feet as I retreat to the table, mostly to put some distance between Lia and me. I wonder if I’ll still feel the tug of affection once Ric stakes her, or if it will disappear once I can no longer see her face.
“Why don’t you meet up with the others and let me take care of this?” Ric asks gruffly. “It’s been pretty rough on Elena having you gone.”
My lips twist sardonically and when I feel a flash of hatred toward Lia, it feels a lot like relief. “Because it wasn’t enough to try to sire bond me to their Hive Queen. They were screwing with my reactions to Elena, too. I figured out how to beat some of their brainwashing but I don’t know how much of it.”
Ric presses his lips together, but he doesn’t comment, just shuffles back over and tips some whiskey into my empty champagne flute.
“It’s all sight-triggered and I won’t know how far it goes until I see her,” I admit, cold fear lurking under every word.
What if they ruined me? What if I only want to hurt her? How long will it take to find a way to bypass the damage they did to my brain?
“I’m not going to stay away,” I tell him baldly. “As soon as we deal with our first round of problems here, I’m going back to her. But I’m going to need a chaperone, and you’ll have to be fast as hell. If it looks like I’m going to hurt her–”
“I’ll be there,” he interrupts firmly, not looking away, and for a second all that passes between us is the silent knowledge of what it’s like not to trust yourself around the ones you love. Shit, I should have invited Stefan after all. We could have had our own little schizophrenic support group.
I pick up my glass and pour whiskey down my suddenly dry throat, wincing at the mix of flavors from the traces of champagne still left in my glass.
Ric drops into his chair and dodges a glance at me, then coughs stiffly into his fist.
“Spit it out,” I growl.
“Okay, but no more tossing me into the walls during your next temper tantrum,” Ric grumbles and I just roll my eyes impatiently. He shifts in his chair, gaze flicking back toward the bed. “So, do you want me to take care of Katherine, too?”
I look away, thinking of Jeremy. They got pretty close on their little road trip away from Silas. I know the kid thought Katherine changed after she became a human, that she was attempting to atone for her many sins. Unfortunately, I think he was right. In her own, screwed-up Katherine way, she was trying to be better.
A humorless smile tugs at my mouth. How am I not surprised Katherine Pierce’s vision of “better” included a plan that would make both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin look un-ambitious?
“I was thinking,” Ric ventures, finally breaking my silence, “we need a more permanent solution for Silas. And Qetsiyah told me Katherine’s blood holds the cure to immortality.” He clears his throat uncertainly. “It could fix all our problems at once if we let Silas drain Katherine, and then we finished him off once he was human.”
I have had hours of fantasies about how I would kill Katherine, given the chance. I can guess how Stefan would deal with her, what Elena would prefer me to do, and what Baby Gilbert would no doubt vote for. But no matter how much I love all of them, I’ve never been very good at living up to anyone’s expectations except my own.
And I know exactly what fate Katherine has earned.
“Leave Katherine for me,” I tell Ric. “We’re going to do this my way.”
I snag the whiskey bottle out of his hand and stand up, sauntering over to the door. I force my body to move easily, even though protest riots through every inch of me, scraping my insides raw with a horror that might belong to me, and might be nothing more than a lab rat response, zapped into my brain. I have to get out of here.
Lazily, I say, “I’ve got some errands to run. See if you can’t wrap things up here while I’m gone.”
Ric comes to his feet, his dark eyes worried. “Damon, are you sure?”
I shift, turning my back on my old best friend so I can face my new one. “I trust you,” I tell him steadily.
I wait until he gives me the hint of a nod before I turn the knob to let myself out.
“Bury the body nice and deep,” I toss over my shoulder, and then I close the door behind me.
Chapter 26: In Time We Trust
DAMON
“Sir, don’t forget your carry-on baggage,” the stewardess says. But her practiced smile falters beneath widening eyes when I turn and give her a wink.
“I travel light.”
My boot hits the hollow floor of the jet way with a decisive thud. I pull out my phone and power it back up, my strides long as I accelerate around the slower travelers who all give me a wider birth when their peripheral vision registers the black leather of my jacket.
A matronly woman’s head swivels to follow my exact trajectory as I pass, and I blow a mocking kiss to her pudgy-nosed husband. They both flush with irritated embarrassment and I leave them behind, focusing on my phone and the text to Ric that I’m already tapping out as I walk.
Operation EX-piration Date was a success. You have the shark’s cage and cattle prods ready for Operation Brainwash Detox?
Ric is supposed to pick me up here, because I couldn’t park my stolen car at the airport. I still haven’t decided exactly how to break the news to him that I didn’t take Katherine to California to bury her. Then again, it isn’t really his business. Other than myself, my brother is the only one with a right to know and I’ll tell him when I’m damned good and ready. Right now, I’m way overdue to see my girl and Katherine’s the last thing I want to talk about.
Five days have crawled by since Ric met me in the motel, and ironically, we only needed three hours of that to take care of Lia, big bad super-vamp that she was. Ric staked her right on the ugly bedspread at the Motel 6, and he wrapped her in the same cheap polyester quilt to take her down to the trunk. I helped him dig the grave and I lowered Lia into it but I never laid eyes on her face again. Even then, it was the hardest grave I’ve had to dig since Jeremy’s.
For the following three days, I kept Katherine sleeping the peaceful sleep of the heavily morphined while I waited for the vervain to pass out of her system. Meanwhile, I alternated between playing boozy, profanity-laden gin rummy with Ric and pacing the too-short hallways of the Motel 6, yammering on the phone to Elena at all hours of the day and night like a teenage girl. I didn’t want to talk about what I was going to do with Katherine, or when I’d be home, but I had to hear her voice so I’d talk about anything else.
During those phone calls, Elena got stories of my past out of me that I haven’t thought about in decades, I listened to her impassioned summation of why One Tree Hill was so much more than a soap opera, we argued philosophies of taxation, disagreed about what colors cars should be painted, and she made me laugh so loudly that Ric came out to check on me after she did a little one-woman show satirizing all the making up and making out that was going
on all around the vacation house they apparently rented after I got kidnapped.
I smirk at the memory and check my phone again, but there’s no word from Ric.
Dick.
He probably forgot about picking me up and is drunk in front of Wheel of Fortune, shouting out the wrong answers to all the word puzzles and cursing at the contestants for being mentally impaired.
The airport terminal stretches out before me and I lengthen my stride, wishing I could risk a little kick of vampire speed because there are acres of industrial carpet and gift shops between me and the taxi stand, then a three-hour drive to their vacation rental. Except I can’t exactly go there if Ric’s not sober enough to play temporary restraining order for me. Stefan could probably handle it if I gave him a weapon, but I can’t gamble Elena’s safety on that possibility.
Besides, Stefan’s still a little whiny at me for appointing him deputy to Ric’s sheriff’s badge for the extended search and destroy mission we’ve got planned to mop up the last few Augustines. I figured that Stefan’s always responded well to some healthy competition, and both of them could benefit from a little purpose in their aimless lives.
Otherwise, Ric’s going to bankrupt his meager bank account on whiskey and self-help books with titles like Cunnilicious and Wham, Bam, You Da Man that he thinks I don’t know he’s been ordering off his Amazon app all week.
Plus, Ric loves all that detective shit, and it’s going to be a righteous bitch tracking down all the members of the Augustines who survived the fire or weren’t there when Katherine lit the match.
Delegation, bitches. It’s the new lazy.
Besides, once I’m sure I can touch Elena without wanting to go all vampire-hating-minion on her beautiful ass, I’m going to be Otherwise Occupied. By marrying her about forty-two times, and having three times as many wedding nights, and then seeing how long we can live naked on a beach before we run out of tourists to eat.
Rounding the corner, I see the rat-maze of airport security ahead of me, complete with tiny yapping dogs and glitter-encrusted teenage girls with bored eyes, tiny shorts, and big cell phones standing behind their paunchy, suspicious-faced daddies.
Home freaking stretch.
There’s no security for those of us headed out into the wild, dangerous world, so I blow by the body scanners and wand-toting Rent-a-Gropers and into the bypass lane that heads straight to my bright yellow ride home. Except shit, I’d better hit an ATM, because no way am I carrying enough cash to tip on a three-hour cab ride unless I do it in the kind of sexual favors that don’t come up until Chapter 15 of Ric’s latest Amazon purchase.
Not that I peeked or anything.
I scan for one of the ubiquitous grey banking machines and what I see instead has me stopping dead, the double-wide stroller behind me riding right up into my Achilles tendon until the exhausted mom piloting it backs off with a muttered, “Sorry, sorry.”
There’s no way he’s stupid enough to do this here.
Except that calm brown eyes and a steady jaw assure me that he is. Ric’s standing front and center of the waiting area on the other side of the security bypass. And as if two dozen jumpy airport guards weren’t enough of an audience for testing out what kind of kamikaze craziness the Augustines might have wired into my brain, Ric brought the whole damn home team.
Tweedle-hates-me-for-kissing-his-girlfriend-dee and Tweedle-the-blue-haired-girlfriend-in-question-dum are standing off to the side in front of a row of empty chairs. In the middle is Ric, accompanied by a woman who currently scares me more than an entire army of flamethrower-armed-Augustines. And on the right we have Brother Dearest and his ultimate match in styling products usage, Vampire Barbie.
Strangely, Baby Gilbert is wearing the guilty eyes and stiff jaw that usually means he’s in trouble, not the other way around. And the punk rock princess beside him lifts a hand in a simple little two finger wave of welcome.
What in the actual fuck?
I cough once and start walking again, making my way over to the waiting area and the chairs where my family waits, because there’s no point in making a scene. At least not before I lose my brainwashed shit and strangle the only girl I ever loved in sight of my brother, God and the FAA because Lia’s best neurosurgeon told me to.
“Your appropriate-time-and-place app needs updating,” I growl at Ric, glaring at him across the careful twenty-foot buffer I’ve left myself.
In my peripheral vision, Elena’s silhouette burns. Slim shoulders and luscious hips, an impatient tilt to her head.
She’s destroying me, and I haven’t even glanced her way yet.
“Damon…” Elena says softly, and I almost run. God help me, in front of every one of these cameras and cell phones and I would blow the top clean off what they think human speed can be.
But Ric and Stefan both take a step forward like they can hear my panic in the silence, and I meet Ric’s dark eyes and remind myself of how fast he moved when the Augustines attacked. I remember all the times I’ve snapped his neck for him, to stop him from doing something he couldn’t forgive himself for.
Ric jerks his chin at me once in greeting, and my brother just waits quietly. Anger flares through me as I see that Stefan’s hands are relaxed, like he has no intention of doing anything.
Stefan should be more on guard, damn him. It’s Elena’s safety at stake here, and I know that means something to him. But he rocks his weight into his heels and gives me one of his mild, knowing looks that makes me want to punch him straight through the concrete pillar at his back. Right now is so not the time for him to start trusting me.
If I were smart, I’d walk away from this whole thing and set up another meeting with Elena, with more bodyguards and less potential human witnesses.
But because I’m a perverse son of a bitch and nearly two centuries of bad habits are hard to kick, I do the wrong thing.
I look at Elena.
And immediately get déjà vu. Because I just left Katherine in a hospital bed in San Francisco, with a carefully calibrated concussion, thirty thousand dollars in an account that matches the name on the fake ID in her purse, and no clue who she is or what she’s done with the twenty years of life that her new birth date tells her that she’s experienced.
Katherine’s going to get what she always should have had: a normal life as a beautiful woman. This time, all her choices will be her own and if she turns out to be a selfish, brilliantly manipulative bitch all over again, at least it won’t be because there’s a vindictive hybrid with an indeterminate accent chasing after her. It is a gift, and a uniquely cruel punishment, and exactly the kind of imperfect redemption she’s earned.
Right before I took off, I turned back for one last look at the woman who gave me my immortal existence and did her best to ruin it, and I felt absolutely nothing.
Which is what I feel now.
Disorientation tornadoes through me and I take one unsteady step, planting my feet a touch wider to keep my balance as a name falls from my lips, my eyes slipping to Stefan’s when the word becomes a question.
“Elena?”
He gives me one bare nod, his eyes darkening, and I make myself look at her again.
Earrings dangling little silver hearts. The daylight ring I designed twisted sideways on her finger like she’s been playing with it. Wearing the new ankle boots that she told me over the phone that she loves, but that pinch her left foot and she can’t figure out why.
It’s Elena, it couldn’t be anyone else, but I wait for my body to respond like it has every time I’ve laid eyes on her for the past two years and instead all I hear is the slow, steady beat of my own vampire heartbeat.
This can’t be happening.
I have forgotten hundreds upon thousands of moments that I’ve lived through. Happily. And then others play over and over again through my tired mind, whether I want them to or not.
Right now, I know I’m seeing this moment for only the first of many painful replays, because I’m staring at the l
ove of my life and I feel like I don’t know her. The Augustines have ruined me.
I sit down.
“Are you okay?” Elena’s eyes are paragraphs of worry, pages of possibilities of all the things that could have gone wrong in the time since we’ve been apart.
Her voice.
My heart jolts into overdrive as I realize her soft tone carries every familiarity that was screamingly missing from my reaction to her beautiful face. I close my eyes and bite my tongue so I won’t beg her to keep talking, to baptize me in the soundtrack of everything that I adore.
Her voice is the sound of our future re-opening into a thousand imagined days behind my closed lids, all rich with the possibilities the Augustines couldn’t take from us.
They only had pictures to work with, so they trained me not to respond to the sight of her, to make it easier to transfer all my loyalty to Lia. But I love Elena with so much more than just my eyes.
The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) Page 35