The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (43 page)

I glance at Lia and as soon as I do, a wave of protectiveness floods me. I want her away from here, and safe. She’s my oldest friend and now that we’re free of the other Augustine leaders, I’m sure she’d never force me to do anything I didn’t want to. I’ve been a prisoner here for five days. She could have done the procedure to addict me to vampire blood within the first hour, but she didn’t, because she knows how I feel about it. And she let me out of my cell.

This isn’t a simple right vs. wrong. It’s a choice between women who have both let me down, and who both came through for me when it counted. It’s a choice between their imperfect but well-meaning visions of the world they want to create.

This is my call to make. Elena will never know what happened here today and for as often as I’ve tried to be the better man for her, this is too important to just do what she would think was right. I’m older, I’ve seen more than she has, and I understand all the consequences far better than she ever will. And more than that, these women are my past. We shared things that Elena was never a part of.

Whatever I do now,
I
have to live with it.

I make my decision, and I
move.

JEREMY

Brakes squeal behind us, and a horn blares.

We’re close enough to the fire now to glimpse the flashing lights of fire trucks through the trees. The SUV is losing speed and I realize my foot has slacked off the gas pedal. Cali squeezes my arm, rumble strips on the edge of the highway protesting as I finally remember to guide the Suburban onto the shoulder.

The side door of the SUV slams open and I jam on the brakes, glancing back at the explosion of movement in the backseat.

Caroline hauls Stefan back away from the door with a grunt of effort and Ric turns to help.

“Think, Stefan,” Caroline orders. “Damon probably set the fire himself so he could escape and he’s long gone by now. Or—”

She stops herself almost immediately, but I still flinch at her implication.

“Either way,” she continues with a catch in her voice, “if it’s been burning long enough for the trucks to be here, there’s nothing else we can do.”

He stops struggling and sags in her grip.

“Shh,” is all she says, but she holds him fiercely and I know she’s afraid to tell him it will be okay.

“Elena,” Ric prods gently. “Say something.”

My sister’s eyes are huge in a face the color of ash, the blue and red flashes of the emergency lights chasing each other across her skin. She hates sirens, I remember, ever since the accident.

“The last thing he said to me was that he’d be back,” Elena whispers, and Cali sucks in a jagged, sympathetic breath. “And Damon hates to make promises.”

There’s a click as Cali slides the gear selector into Park for me and nudges my arm, nodding toward the backseat. I think I catch the glitter of tears in her eyes, but she looks away before I can be sure.

I get out and move around the hood even though I can’t feel my feet. Ric climbs out the side door so I can get in, and then I’m pulling my sister into my arms.

“He can’t be dead,” she whispers. “Not Damon.”

“He
can’t
be,” I agree, my chest threatening to tear wide open with the absolute sincerity of my words.

I haven’t been surprised by death for a long time. Somewhere along the way, I just started to expect it, stopped thinking anyone was immune. But Damon’s just too damned mean to die. I always figured if some spell gone wrong took out the whole world, Damon would be left reclining on the ashes and smoking a stolen cigar, cursing at the cockroaches and bitching at Stefan for checking out early like a pussy.

“If he is– Jeremy, if he is I don’t think I can…Jeremy, I can’t–” Elena stutters, her tears spilling over onto my shirt.

“Elena?” Caroline says, a note of alarm in her voice, and I remember what she told me about the day my sister flipped her switch.

My grip tightens with sheer desperation. I can’t let her do that again. If we aren’t able to find Damon, no one else will ever be able to trick Elena into turning her humanity back on.

“Don’t,” I whisper, dangerously close to begging. “Please, ‘Lena. Please don’t.”

My sister shudders against me, and vaguely, I hear Cali say, “We’ve got to get them away from here before someone sees us. Do you want me to drive or are you up for it?”

“I’ll do it,” Ric says, and the side door slams.

I tuck Elena’s head under my chin and press a hand flat to her ear to muffle the sound of the sirens, my throat tightening when her tears dampen my skin.

“Hang on,” I murmur to her. “For me,” I tell my sister, bending close so she’ll hear me over the roar of the engine as Ric pulls out. “Hang on for me, Elena. Please.”

The hour’s drive back seems like it takes an entire decade of my life. I murmur empty reassurances to my sister and stroke her hair, even though that makes me feel weird, because I’ve seen Damon do it and the motion seems to calm her down. And that way no one will notice my hands are shaking, too.

Damon Salvatore cannot be dead.

And if he is, I honestly don’t know how any of us will ever be okay again.

I don’t notice we’ve arrived at the vacation rental until the headlights go out, and the sudden silence of the engine is an ending I’m not ready for.

No one moves until Caroline clears her throat and says, “I bought tequila.” Her voice is subdued, like she can’t muster the energy for even her most artificial perky tone. “It’s in the house.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Ric mutters, and Cali pops her door open in unison with his.

I start to shift in preparation for lifting Elena into my arms, but she surprises me when she sits back and wipes her eyes, straightening her shoulders.

Cali pulls open the side door for us. “Everybody outta the damn car,” she prompts. “It is Beer Fucking Thirty, no matter how you count it.”

I slide out, but before I can turn back to help my sister, Cali leans in and passes Elena a handful of cocktail napkins.

“If your boyfriend was really in there,” she says baldly, “I bet he torched a ton of those Augustine bastards before he took off.”

Elena’s chin lifts a fraction of an inch and I hold my breath, waiting for her to explode, but instead pride gleams in her watery eyes. “Fiancé,” she says.

Cali smiles. “Fiancé,” she agrees, and grasps Elena’s free hand to pull her out of the SUV.

Elena pauses to blow her nose on a cocktail napkin and then they head for the house together. I pretend to check my phone when Stefan gets out, because I can’t stand to meet his eyes right now. To my surprise, Caroline hangs back with me instead of following him.

She touches my arm, and when I look up, she’s obviously been crying, too. “I know everybody thinks I was reverse sire bonded to him or whatever,” she says, her lower lip trembling, “but I never
hated
him, you know?”

I don’t pretend to understand half the stuff that has gone on between Caroline and Damon, but I nod hastily anyway and reach over to pat her shoulder. “I know,” I insist. “But we should get inside.” I can tell by the stricken look in her eyes that she doesn’t think he made it out and I don’t want to hear her say it.

She nods, and as we get to the front steps, I hear Elena’s phone ring. I break into a run, and get inside just in time to see her pulling the device out of her pocket.

I slam to a halt, and my sister says through tight lips, “It’s Katherine.”

“Oh screw that,” Ric bitches. “Not today.”

“No,” I interrupt, striding forward. “Let me answer it. She hasn’t called since she took off. If she’s contacting us now, she knows something.”

“Yeah, and she wants to taunt us,” Caroline protests. “Don’t give her the satisfaction!”

“Or she's trying to make a deal in exchange for what she knows,” I suggest. “Come on, it’s Katherine. She always has a bigger plan. Just let me see what I can get out of her.”

Elena drops the still-ringing phone into my hand, turning away. “Fine. But I’m not talking to her. Not right now.”

I answer the phone and bring it slowly to my ear, trying to brace myself for whatever I might hear on the other end.

*
              *              *

DAMON

It’s a bitch trying to get two limp women’s bodies—one breathing, one not—into a hotel without getting pepper sprayed by the neighborhood watch.

Their figures are too familiar in my arms when I carry them, and I force my mind to be chokingly blank against any emotion I might have about it. The switch beckons with the seductive safety that nothingness offers.

I don’t want to feel anything until I can be sure the reactions are really mine.

But I know myself, and I know once my humanity is off, I won’t want to turn it back on. I never do. And this time, I’m not sure Elena could haul me back, because the Augustines have been working all week to erase the part of me that can’t resist her.

I don’t know if they’ve succeeded.

When I was making my choice outside the burning Augustine lair, I didn’t stop for a second to consider how much the brainwashing sessions in the lab were skewing my answer, and that scares the hell out of me. I have no idea how much of what is going on in my head is them, and how much is actually me. I didn’t even think about the possibility until I was driving away, sirens and fire trucks passing me from the other direction as Katherine coughed in the passenger seat and in the back, Lia lay as quietly as only a broken neck could ensure.

Since vampire blood doesn’t work on her anymore, I had to take Katherine to the hospital for smoke inhalation treatment just so she’d stop coughing. While I was waiting, I thought about nothing but Dr. Penfield and his lab, trying to reconstruct everything they said during the re-programming. But there’s so much I can’t remember.

Once the doctors at the hospital helpfully sedated Katherine, I compelled them into giving me enough doses
of sedative to keep her comatose for a month, and then I carried her out the back stairwell.

She thought I chose her. I didn’t.

I drop Katherine onto the hotel bed from so high up that she bounces sloppily when she hits and I turn away because I don’t care how she landed.

I already laid Lia on the other bed and even with my back to both women, I can see their lying faces with perfect clarity. The man I was two years ago would already be digging their graves. Or maybe not, because back then, I missed both of them so much that I couldn’t live with myself unless my switch was locked as far “off” as I could get it.

I’m not even sure which of them has betrayed me the most thoroughly.

Katherine, for stealing one hundred and forty-five years of the life I might have lived if I’d known the truth about her and for destroying the man that would have made me into. Or Lia, for trying to steal the
next
hundred and forty-five years by erasing the man that I am.

And the most messed up part of all of it, the part that brings my exhausted brain to a grinding halt every time I think about it, is that they both still care about me.

Me.

Katherine’s so selfish I didn’t really believe she was capable of the emotion, but over and over since Elena turned her human, Katherine’s fought for me. Misguidedly, and in twisted and self-conscious ways. But even after I rejected her as cruelly as I could, Katherine still tried to save me, kept insisting she needed to make it up to me for what she did in 1864. And now,
now
with her lying unconscious and still healing from the fire she tried to save me from, I actually believe her. And I wish I didn’t.