The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation, Unspoken(17)

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.”