Once, finding two dead bodies would have horrified and traumatized Elena. The girl she used to be would have called the police, would have wept. She’d seen so much since then. Now all she could muster up was pity and a hard determination to catch Siobhan, to stop her. Elena didn’t know when she had become this colder, tougher person.
Before she could really think about it, about how she had changed, she caught a flicker of a peacock blue and rust-red aura in the woods to the side of the highway. Damon. Their bond tugged insistently in her chest, and she pulled over.
She could feel him coming toward her, and a moment later, the passenger side door opened and Damon climbed into the car. He was smiling, and Elena felt a sharp pull of excitement, not her own. Damon was up to something. She found herself smiling back at him, her heart lifting.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question. You’re a little underdressed.” Damon said, his gaze skating curiously across her lacy nightgown. Then he stiffened. “Are you bleeding?”
“What?” Elena said, and realized. “No, not me. I got a Guardian task and I wasn’t… I didn’t find the vampire, but I found some victims.”
“Jack’s your task?” Through the bond, she could feel his pleasure that the Guardians might finally be on their side.
Elena sighed. “No,” she said. “A different vampire, a real one.”
“Don’t let this distract you,” Damon said quickly. His voice was flat, but there was urgency underneath it, and pain. “Jack’s the most important thing. For Stefan.”
“Damon…” she said, reaching for his hand.
There was a cracking noise like a gunshot, and the roof of the car suddenly dented in. Elena screamed as a figure leaped from the roof of the car, kicking in the window. Damon was outside in a flash, blue pieces of safety glass scattering everywhere.
Elena barely had time to draw a shocked breath when Damon ripped the back door of the car open and shoved in a struggling figure dressed in black. A vampire, she realized. One thin-fingered hand flailed out and caught Elena’s hair, dragging her head back against the seat. She shrieked as sharp pain shot through her scalp, and then again as Damon jerked the vampire’s arm back, long strands of Elena’s hair still dangling from its fingers.
“Don’t touch her!” Damon hissed, throwing himself on top of the other vampire and clamping one heavy hand on the back of its neck. Elena could feel Damon’s vicious satisfaction in the violence, his pleasure in being able to act, to win against an enemy again.
“What are you doing?” Elena asked, pressing a hand against her aching scalp as she twisted around in the driver’s seat to get a better look. The vampire was young, looked younger than she was. He writhed and growled as Damon shoved his face down against the seat and hit him hard between the shoulder blades. Finally, he grew still, trapped beneath Damon and panting hard. His dark eyes were fixed on Elena, his face distorted with hatred and fury. He bared his teeth at her, his canines long and sharp. If he managed to get loose…
It must be one of Jack’s synthetic vampires, she realized, because his aura seemed just like a human’s.
“I can tell now,” Damon said breathlessly, picking up on her curiosity. “There’s a touch of something wrong about them. I don’t know what exactly. It’s like a chemical taint.” The vampire bucked under him and Damon hit him on the back of the head, forcing out a grunt of pain. “He was lurking outside our building. He thought he could get to us.”
Elena’s stomach lurched.
Picking up on her fear, Damon wrapped a hand around the younger vampire’s throat, squeezing. See how much stronger I am than he is, his face seemed to say. I’ll protect us.
“Don’t kill him in my car, Damon,” Elena objected, her eyes drawn back to the young vampire’s furious face.
“I can’t kill him, I don’t know how,” Damon said, but he was grinning. The vampire growled, the sound muffled against the backseat, and Damon smacked him lightly on the back of the head, his other hand still tight around his throat. “I’m going to do some research. Where can we keep him?”
“Not the apartment, that won’t hold him,” Elena said quickly. “Let me think.”
“Somewhere no one will overhear,” Damon said. “Somewhere we can keep him under control.”
Elena started the engine and pulled out on the highway, heading for campus. “My old dorm. It’ll be empty for a few more weeks, and there are storage rooms, like cages, in the basement.” Damon looked doubtful, and she added quickly, “They’re strong. And no one will hear him down there.”
“Excellent,” Damon said, and Elena felt another flare of excitement from him. “There’s something I want to try.”
Chapter 9
Meredith dug her nails into the palms of her hands and tried not to breathe. The vampire—the young vampire, he looked like a high school kid—was watching her, leaning against the bars of his cage. Beneath his shaggy black bangs, his dark eyes shone with hate as he looked at the group staring at him. Both of his wrists were chained to the steel bars of one of the dorm’s basement storage cages, and he twisted his wrists against them unceasingly, testing the handcuffs for weakness. Damon must have found a way to weaken him, so the chains were enough to hold him.
Damon tapped the bars between them, poking at the vampire’s face, and the kid lunged, snapping at him with sharp teeth. Damon pulled his hand back with a laugh. “You see, he’s fast, but no faster than I am,” he explained. Meredith, Alaric, Bonnie, Matt, Jasmine, and Elena had all gathered to see Damon’s latest development. “I wanted to show him to you all, because I want your help in figuring out how Jack made him, and how to kill him.”
The trapped vampire was growling, softly but steadily, like a savage animal. The sound grated on Meredith’s nerves, and when Alaric’s hand brushed against her arm, she jerked away.
“Are you okay?” he asked her quietly, and she nodded, not looking at him.
“I’m fine.” She had to keep her distance from Alaric. She felt sick, thinking about it, but she could still smell the tantalizing, salty scent of his blood.
“It’s so creepy, the way he’s just staring at us,” Bonnie said. Her small face was wrinkled with disgust, and she clung to Zander’s arm. With a jolt, Meredith realized she was the only one who could hear the vampire’s growling.
Meredith felt dizzy. She was just like this kid huddled against the bars. What would Elena say if she knew what Meredith was now? Or Bonnie? Would they want to chain her up the same way?
Damon knew about her, but Damon was practical: He thought Meredith was his best route to finding Jack. Not to mention that he’d given his word, and Meredith knew that once he gave it, Damon never broke his word. Besides, she’d find a cure before anyone else found out the truth, she promised herself, stuffing her hands into her pockets so no one could see them shake.
Behind her, Jasmine pressed her back against the wall, as far from the imprisoned vampire as she could get. She was holding tightly to Matt’s hand, and Meredith could hear her quick, panicked little breaths. This was Jasmine’s first face-to-face encounter with an unfriendly vampire, Meredith realized. Matt was stroking her hair with his other hand, comforting, his attention on Jasmine. The vampire thrashed and kicked, straining against his bonds, the handcuffs clanging against the bars of his cage, and Jasmine yelped, burying her face in Matt’s shoulder.
“Let me try something,” Damon said, and picked up a stake from the floor. The vampire in the cage stopped twisting at his handcuffs and stood very still, his eyes narrowed.
“We know that won’t kill him,” Elena said, her voice even. She and Damon glanced at each other, clearly in perfect accord. They were strangely alike, Meredith thought.
“It’ll hurt, though,” Damon said cheerfully. Turning, he slammed the stake between the bars and into the vampire’s chest. The kid gasped, a long rattling breath, and his eyes flew wide open. Damon pulled the stake out. A bright bubble of blood swelled out of the wound and trickled down the vampire’s chest, but Meredith could already see the hole closing up, leaving the vampire’s chest unmarked.
“You see how quickly he heals,” Damon told them.
Meredith flinched. The kid probably hadn’t asked for this to happen to him, either. That was true of most vampires, she supposed. They’d all been victims once. It wasn’t something she’d worried about, until now.
She pulled her hand from her pocket and rubbed at her forehead. It was too much—the noise and the smells of her friends’ blood, all of them crowded together down here—and she was so hungry. She hadn’t had any blood since that shameful night Damon had found her.
“Want to tell us where Jack’s hiding?” Damon said, his voice friendly. Meredith glanced between Damon and Elena. Elena was nibbling on her lip, her eyes bright. This was about Stefan, of course. It wasn’t just a vampire hunt. If they couldn’t take vengeance on Jack directly, torturing one of his creations would help.
The vampire bared his teeth at Damon. “I don’t need to tell you,” he said. He sounded sulky, like the human teenager he had been probably only a month or two before. “Jack’ll find you, and then you’ll be sorry. I hope he lets me help kill you.”