The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (49 page)

“Yeah, well where
I
come from, we call it two steps from necrophilia,” Ric grouches.

Without looking, I wing the empty bottle of champagne, the thick glass whistling through the air straight towards his head. Ric snags it automatically with his left hand and then stares, dumbfounded.

“Jesus, did you see that catch? I can’t get used to that shit.” He shakes his head. “It’s a travesty that you’ve been keeping me too busy since I came back from the dead to get laid.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Tell me the truth, Damon. I’m going to be amazing in bed now that I’m a vampire, aren’t I?”

My lips twitch with amusement. “Stamina isn’t everything, young Padawan. Unless you spent your time on the Other Side doing a little educational reading in the adult section of the library, the girls are still going to be singing you the
When Harry Met Sally
chorus of faux Big O’s, even now that you’ve earned your fangs.”

“Way to tarnish the silver lining of my undead cloud,” he mutters, stashing my empty bottle under the table and lifting the full one to his lips.

I roll my eyes. “You’re too busy pining after Jenna to get laid anyway. Don’t try to blame that shit on me.”

“Yeah, well, if you understood the skills that girl had…” Ric gives a low whistle. “I’d have sung any chorus she wanted me to,
including
the dumb ones from
Guys and Dolls
.”

“I know what you’re doing, you know,” I tell him conversationally. “Stefan’s tried this role reversal bullshit on me before. I don’t need you to cheer me up or distract me.”

“Fine,” Ric says, setting his bottle down on the table and reaching into his jacket for a thick oak stake I recognize as one of the ones I sharpened myself. “Then who's first?”

My hand twitches to stop him before I think better of it, and his quick eyes don't miss a thing. Ric leans forward, his expression serious.

“We can’t let them go, Damon. They’ll cause too much damage.”

“Well, no shit. But–”

There’s a soft brush of fabric as Lia shifts on the bed across the room, and then her head slowly straightens.

“Oh,
fuck,
” Ric says, and vaults over the bed closest to us, reaching for Lia.

I lunge, not even pausing to see if he took the stake with him before I attack. All I know is the feeling of tearing canvas beneath my hands as the seams of his jacket give way under my grip and I hurl him across the room.

His shoulder hits an ugly watercolor of a lumpy duck and the cheap wood of the frame splinters under the blow, the pieces falling to the ground alongside Ric.

I move between him and Lia, my vision painfully sharp as blood rushes into the whites of my eyes.

“What the hell are you doing, Damon?” Ric spits as he lurches back to his feet.

“She chose me,” I hiss. “She had dozens of vampires who were perfectly loyal to her, who believed in her mission and had followed her for years. They were all dying in that fire and she came back for
me
instead of trying to find a way to get them out.”

“I understand that,” Ric says, holding his hands up. “But as soon as she wakes up, she’ll be able to command you and I can’t let that happen. Look, a neck snap isn’t permanent. She won’t feel a thing, I promise. I can do it if you don’t want to.”

My eyes flare and he backs up another step.

“I can do it,” I bite off, and he nods quickly, his eyes locked on me.

My hands place themselves on Lia’s chin and the base of her head and I feel her twitch under my palms, her nervous system starting to come back online as she heals.

I exhale, slowly.

“Damon…” Ric warns in a low voice, but I don’t answer.

I stare down at my friend, at the girl who ran further into a fire to save me, who stroked my hair to calm me down and whose eyes brightened with joy when she heard I’d finally found a girl who loved me back.

And I snap her neck.

When Lia is limp in my hands, I try to remember how she took me to the lab and strapped me down day after day, and how she was deliberately trying to change the way I felt about my fiancé. She is nothing like the friend I remember. I let go and her head drops back against the flat hotel pillow.

Ric makes his way tentatively back to my side and he looks down at Lia, studying the curl of her hair and the slight upturn of her tiny nose as if he’s trying to decode her face. “Damn, Salvatore, don’t you know any ugly girls?”

“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.

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.