The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (35 page)

J: thought you didn't want to date…

C: To be strictly factual, I wanted to use you for your young, gorgeous body, fall secretly in un-requited love with you, and then write heart-wrenching, brilliantly arranged, award-winning songs about the whole affair.

J: so that every other underaged music nerd in the world would fall in un-requited love with you. and your killer drum solos. cruel.

C: Cruel = this entire album of shirtless lake house vacation shots. And also, WTF? You have a lake house?

J: is that a trick question?

C: I hate you.

J: What happened to un-requited love?

C: ; )

DAMON

I hear a woman’s voice, murmuring softly like a tide that tickles my ears. My face twists and the blunted edge of panic digs deep in my chest as I try to discern whether this is a dream or my real life.

She’s singing a song that has the rich wood scent of my childhood bedroom and the lavender sachet of my mother’s soft cotton sleeves. These words are older than I am but their soothing wash is tainted with the sour tang of fear because I can’t move my fingers.

That doesn’t answer my question: whether I’m a prisoner of the lab or of my own troubled sleep. I am rarely allowed to move anymore, and it’s been four days since this all started. They ask me questions and I answer, and I feel, sweet Christ do I
feel.
But the paralytics and the chains keep me from moving.

And yet in the next moment, I forget why it matters. I don’t need to move. I’m tired, and so relaxed and I’d rather listen to Lia sing than go anywhere anyway. There’s something about her voice…she doesn’t hit all the notes in the same way my mother did, even though I’m the one who taught her the song, and sometimes her tone wavers a little. But the sound of her calms me in a very basic way and I need it to keep everything else at bay.

“Damon…”

I sigh.

“Damon, I need you to open your eyes so I can show you something,” Lia says gently.

I try, because I hate to deny her anything. It gives me a crawling feeling under my fingernails, like I’m naked in a place where everyone else has clothes.

To my surprise, my eyelids twitch, and then lift sluggishly and I grimace, stretching the tingling muscles of my face as my metabolism burns through their paralytic pharmaceuticals yet again. I know better than to move more than that, because now I remember that they’ve made incisions yet again today.

This is the fifth day I’ve been a prisoner and the fourth day I’ve been in this lab. So I know incisions mean that Dr. Penfield is using electrical currents on the surface of my brain, skittering kaleidoscope visions made of emotion through my mind the way drugs used to when I first discovered them. It’s easy to get lost in, but I’ve figured out the pattern: Lia gives me a visual trigger, and then Dr. Penfield refines the reaction he wants me to have.

But when I open my eyes, it’s not Lia’s face I see.

It’s a bright, sweet smile and long, shiny brown hair. In the photograph before me, she’s lying back on her elbows on a picnic blanket with leafy shadows dappling the olive-toned skin of her long legs. She’s wearing cutoff shorts, a clingy plum-colored tank top and a fedora that she probably swiped out of my closet because I used to wear them all the time a few years back.

“Do you recognize her?”

I snort. “As if I could forget. That’s Katherine.”

Everyone else has a hell of a time keeping them straight but they rarely fool me. My instincts break them down into their component parts like a blindly taken taste of a cocktail.

Whiskey, vermouth and bitters? That’s a Manhattan.

An enthusiastic but guileless sensuality, more courage than caution, and a heart as big as the sky? That can only be an Elena. Put it in the biggest glass you’ve got, because I can never get enough.

But a sly kind of sexy, wrapped in confidence and a cruel intelligence like a Trojan horse full of Ebola virus? That’s a Katherine, hold the garnish and don’t tip the fucking bartender.

The photograph crinkles slightly in the grip of Lia’s fingers. “Are you sure?”

“She’s wearing Elena’s clothes and my hat, but that’s definitely Katherine.” The echoing blankness inside my chest when I see her picture is all the ID I’ll ever need.

Lia smiles and takes the picture away, exchanging a glance with Dr. Penfield. “Of course. You must be right.”

Happiness ripples sweetly through my belly in reaction to her approval and I almost smile.

But then something about the way the girl in the picture was holding her knees clamps my throat shut.

“His blood pressure is spiking again,” I hear Dr. Penfield murmur from somewhere behind me.

Her knees were touched softly together, relaxed but still modest. That was Elena. That was
Elena
and I felt
nothing.

Panic grinds darkly beneath the base of my teeth and my muscles slowly draw taut, still reluctant to respond to my commands as the last dregs of the paralytic drugs weight them down. There’s something wrong, something I’m supposed to remember.

“Is everything okay?” Lia’s fingers brush my knee and I realize I’m wearing slacks, the cheap weave of the fabric chafing my skin. I ignore it: I should be grateful for the clothes they gave me.

“I’m upset,” I say in response, my voice coming out puzzled, but not as concerned as I felt a moment ago.

Lia frowns. “Can I get you anything? Do you need a break?”

A break.

Sweat dampens my forehead as I remember. They’re training me like a dog, stimulus and response. The brain is like a forest, they told me. And I’ve built my own paths into it with every memory and experience of my life. My paths are staying, but they’re changing all the signs so everything that used to point to Elena is pointing to Lia instead. And all the trails that lead to “no” have disappeared into the undergrowth.

Except that brains don’t come with maps. The Augustines know the basic layout but the only way they can be absolutely certain which pathway they are working on is if I
tell
them. If I focus, if I’m smarter than them, I can figure out what they’re trying for and concentrate on something else entirely so that I connect whatever I choose to the response they give me. When they ask me about Elena, it’s because they want me to forget my loyalty to her. So I try to think about Katherine instead.

My memories of this week are all blurred, but I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason I’ve lasted this long. I was fighting.

Relief pounds through my veins and my name repeats through my head, drowning out the identification number they gave me in labs just like this one. I am Damon Salvatore, and I am nobody’s slave.

“Wait. Let me see that picture again,” I say aloud.

Lia glances at Dr. Penfield, and his shoe scuffs against industrial tile behind me as he adjusts one of his machines. Lia holds up the picture, and yeah, it’s Elena.

She has a way of tucking her hair behind her ear where she always misses just the wisp of a strand and it’s right there, frozen forever in the moment of that picture, lying against her beautiful cheek. This picture was probably taken this summer, at the picnic she talked Matt and Jeremy into when I was meeting with the plumber about the leak in the boarding house kitchen.

Confusion wavers my thoughts as Dr. Penfield activates one of his electrodes and I concentrate harder.
This
is the girl whose voice I would do anything for. This is the girl whose very presence makes all the pieces of my personality fit together better than they have at any moment in the last century and a half.

Pain beats behind my temples like the protest of a muscle coming back to life after too many days of enforced motionlessness.

“Why is it that you hate Katherine?” Lia prompts.

I bring up an image of Katherine in my mind, her chin tipped coyly down and her shoes sharp like weapons. I see
Katherine
and not the photograph in front of me, because right now I can remember they’re using it to make my reaction to Katherine apply to Elena.

“She made a fool out of me, enjoyed watching me chase around trying to get her out of the tomb while all along she’d just skipped town on a whim and left Stefan and me behind. She’s a heartless bitch,” I answer with the obedience they’re come to expect from me. Humiliation crawls across my skin when I remember that it’s not always faked. Sometimes I lose myself for hours at a time in their lab and I have no idea what I’ve done during that time, or what they’ve done to me.

Lia drops the photograph and leans down to me, the scent of her skin irritatingly familiar. I quash the sense of peace it triggers and try to remember that it’s betrayal I’m smelling.

“Good. Now forget Katherine. Remember the first time you told me a secret, back when we were prisoners together? Do you remember how good it felt to finally be able to trust someone else in that terrible lab?”

Instead, I remember when Elena hugged me after I had to kill Rose. I let myself sink into what it was like to be cared for, to have my feelings matter to someone besides myself.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I remember.”

It is Elena I trust. Not the woman who strapped me to this chair.

“Focus on my eyes,” Lia orders, and I do, because I have to. “I’m here to help you,” she reminds me. “The Augustines are making me hold you here but I’m going to make sure they set you free to live your life. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“What about you?” I ask, and uncertainty softens the words a little. She’s a liar, so why do I care if I have to leave her behind?

“What about me?” she counters softly.

“I can’t leave you here,” I say, because I know that’s what she wants me to say. “We’re friends. You’d be safer with me.”

“I’m safe with the Augustines,” she says with a smile, stroking my fingers. “You could stay here with me. Would you like that better?”

My mind races, because I’m not sure exactly what they expect from me at this point. Lia knows me too damn well. If I act too spineless, she’ll know I’m pulling one over on them.

I manage a drugged-looking smirk. “Only if they dig me up a hot tub and some decent liquor. And put a ban on that Enya shit you’re piping into the yoga room next door.”

She laughs. “I’ll see what I can do. Okay, have a look at this next series of pictures.”

I blink and force myself to relax, but my plans are running like a mantra through my head, because I know at any moment I’ll start to forget again. I have to fool them long enough to lull their suspicion. I have to get the keys to my cell and get out of here, I have to find Stefan and Elena. I have to get away from Lia. Or kill her.

I almost frown and then catch myself. Wait, which is the right plan? Was I going to kill her or leave her here? Was I going to take her with me so I could…so I could do what? Does Stefan want to talk to her?

Anger flashes through me. Screw Stefan. He’d never understand the friendship I have with Lia. He was so surprised when Ric and I started hanging out, like it was unbelievable that someone would want to be my friend.

Stefan doesn’t need me. He’ll be fine. He was getting better with controlling his bloodlust anyway.

When I leave here, Lia and I will just…wait, where was I going to take her? Does she know when we’re leaving? No, I don’t think I’ve told her yet. Because I need to escape and she wouldn’t like that. But I have to do it for Elena. Forget Stefan, Elena will still want to see me.

Except I’ve been gone for days. What if she’s written me off, moved on already? Maybe she and Stefan will have bonded over trying to find me, the way she and I once grew closer together over a long summer of searching for my brother.