The Vampire Diaries: A Cage of Burning Light (Kindle Worlds Novella) (8 page)

Caroline
listened, but once she’d heard everything and she knew that Elena was all
right, there was an amused smirk on her face. She and Elena were friends, but
there’d always been that level of rivalry and competition between the two of
them. Bonnie saw it and had to resist the urge to ask her how well
she
would have done if she’d been the
one Wilson
attacked. Caroline would likely have had a long answer to that question, and
she didn’t really want to hear it.

“Damon
could be inside that warehouse,” she said instead. “We need to go in and make
sure.”

Caroline
looked a little dubious. “Can’t Damon take care of himself?”

Bonnie
sighed. The history between Caroline and Damon could be called interesting at
best. Bonnie knew
she
wouldn’t have
forgiven Damon for some of the things he’d done to Caroline. Still, Caroline
had.

“Can we
just go and see? I’m worried about him.”

Caroline
blinked. “That’s unusual.”

“You
didn’t see Elena when I found her. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

“All
right,” Caroline said and her voice was softer now. She lifted her head and
scented the air. “I don’t smell anyone in there.”

Bonnie
started toward the building anyway. “Elena didn’t say she couldn’t smell anyone
inside.”

“Elena’s
a baby at this,” Caroline replied smugly. “She wouldn’t know what she was
smelling.”

She had a
point. Bonnie still gave her a fond glare. “Well, what
do
you smell?”

Caroline
hesitated, even as she sniffed again. “Blood,” she said.

Bonnie
felt cold. “Then we’re going in anyway.”

She went
to the door, Caroline following behind with her hands casually laced behind her
back. Caroline had started out life as one of the most anxious people Bonnie
knew, but being a vampire had been good for her confidence levels. Hopefully
not too much, as she pushed past Bonnie and kicked the warehouse door—which
already looked as if it had been kicked in once already—in. Elena had been hurt
badly by Wilson, and Caroline was so much of a rival to her she could ignore
any danger that might exist for her as well.

“So much
for subtle,” Bonnie muttered as she stared at the smashed door.

“Anyone
home?” Caroline yelled as she sauntered inside. “Look at me, I’m a poor feeble
little vampire just looking to be caught! Whee!”

“Care,”
Bonnie hissed as she followed her. “Knock it off.”

Her
friend grinned at her. “I’m just having fun. There’s no one here, honest. No
heartbeat, no nothing.”

“You said
you smelled blood.”

“Yes, but
it’s not fresh anymore.” The two of them walked across an open storage area
that was littered with garbage and abandoned equipment. “Trust me, there’s a
huge difference between the two. Besides, I’m sorry that Elena got hurt, I
really am, but I just can’t see myself getting too worked up about one nutty
guy with a test tube. It’s not like I’m not ready for him.”

She was
looking at Bonnie as she spoke, striding carelessly forward, and Bonnie saw the
pit hidden in the shadows before she did. She grabbed Caroline’s arm and yanked
her back right before she could step into it. Caroline gasped and the two women
stood there for a frozen moment, hanging onto each other and staring down into
the big hole dug through the floor. From the look of it, it was an opening into
the building’s basement, and some sadist had set long, sharpened spikes into
it, all pointing up. Even with the dimming light and her ordinary, human eyes,
Bonnie could see the blood that coated them.

Beside
her, Caroline swallowed. “You said Damon’s missing?”

Bonnie
nodded, still staring at the spikes. The blood was thick on them and coated
them far down their length.

“Elena
never mentioned anything about pits, did she?”

“No. Not
to me. She … she managed to avoid this when she was escaping.”

Which
left no doubt for either of them as to who
hadn’t
avoided it. “Oh, Damon,” Caroline breathed, all her bravado and amusement gone,
and Bonnie looked back over her shoulder to the ruined door and the little bit
of road she could see outside. The road that her dearest friend had taken.
Suddenly, she wished that she was the one in her car and not Elena, even if she
had no idea what to do. At least she’d know when to stop chasing after him, and
that was something she knew Elena would never be able to do.

“I’m
calling my mother,” Caroline decided and headed back outside to get better cell
reception. Bonnie let her and went forward, edging around the pit and giving it
a lot of clearance, just in case the edges weren’t sound. Every step she took
now was cautious and hesitant. If there was one trap, Wilson might have made more.

If he
did, she didn’t find any of them just yet, which she hoped meant that the pit
was Wilson’s
one big secret. Still, she hoped that Caroline was warning her mother of what
they’d found, and resolved to make sure she let the Sheriff know about any
possible extra booby traps in this place when she showed up. It probably should
be checked out by the bomb squad, not a couple of young women who didn’t even
know what sort of threats could be hiding in here.

Still, an
absurd curiosity pulled her forward, wanting to see for herself what her friend
had gone through. At the back of the room, Bonnie came to another door, this
one left open and seemingly safe. Bonnie peeked inside and her eyes widened.

This was
the room Elena told her about, the one she’d been kept prisoner in. It was a
fraction of the size of the main part of the warehouse, likely an office used
by the managers when the building was still being used. There was a work bench
against the wall and some litter, but otherwise the room had been cleaned out.
She could see the jagged hole in the concrete floor where Elena had broken
herself free.

She could
also see the effect of the skylights, faded now with the sun close to setting
but still there. Light lanced down everywhere in the room, forming a circle of
bars around the central, dark section, all forming the bars of a cage and
unmoving except for the dust that danced through them, specks of brilliance
that she could almost imagine singing some kind of impossible song.

Caroline
appeared at her shoulder and peered in. “Wow,” she breathed. “That’s actually
beautiful.”

Bonnie
gave a slow nod, never taking her eyes off the cage. “It is.”

“Somebody’s
a really twisted person to come up with something like this.”

Bonnie
thought of Elena, chasing that truck and what she now knew was inside it, and
closed her eyes in worried grief. “Yes,” she agreed. “They are.”

The man Jennings sent to drive
Wilson out, who was called Greedy by Damon and by no name at all by Wilson, actually used the
name Sternes. He was no witch, but since his boss got into reaping the
financial rewards of the supernatural, he’d learned all about them and the
various monsters that went bump in the night. Unlike Wilson, who was brilliant at science but
otherwise idiotically naïve, he knew exactly what it meant to have a vampire
chasing you. He’d had it happen before, after all.

Sternes
was still around. That vampire wasn’t.

The
moment Wilson
identified Elena to him, Sternes pulled ahead of her and put the truck in the
center of the road, so she wouldn’t have the space she needed to pass him. Wilson sat beside him,
his face impassive but his hand white knuckled while he held onto the bar above
his door that Sternes always like to call the panic bar. At least he wasn’t
trying to get in the way of Sternes doing his job. Jennings said he was a cold one. Not
impervious to emotions, but certainly less flappable than a lot of the people
Sternes’s boss sent him to help, to shake down, and sometimes to kill. His
orders with Wilson
were actually a combination of the first and the third. He was to help Wilson if he had a
vampire in his possession or kill him if he’d lied about it.

He still
might. Jennings
wouldn’t care about Sternes being tempted by the vamp’s money. He’d have just
laughed. Sternes had worked for him for years, and Jennings knew he’d just double-cross the
creature and hand him over later anyway. But Jennings also didn’t like to have outsiders
complaining about his people to him, and despite being on the payroll, Wilson was definitely an
outsider. If Wilson
looked about to really rat Sternes out to the boss, he’d end him and blame it
on the vampires. Perhaps even on this pretty little thing chasing them right
now.

If she
was the one Wilson
had in chains before the mouthy bastard in the back, then Sternes really
regretted the fact he’d lost hold of her.

The truck
was no powerhouse, the gears in crappy shape and the engine slow. It certainly
wasn’t designed to be used as an escape vehicle, but at least it had the
advantage of enough bulk to be hard to pass.

He swung
the wheel back and forth, swerving the truck from side to side in order to keep
her from getting by. The sedan behind hugged his rear bumper, moving from side
to side as well, opposite to how he did, but the driver didn’t have the nerve
to take the chance of racing past him. Given what she was driving, he didn’t
really blame her, and he grinned as he crested a hill and the truck’s tires
almost came off the asphalt.

Wilson gave him a flat
look. Sternes doubted the man had even the slightest sense of humor.

“You’re
enjoying this,” he noted.

“Hey,
this is better than just a boring pick-up job.” He swung a bit far to the left,
and the vampire tried to pass on the right. Sternes yanked the wheel hard and
jerked back over. She slammed on the brakes before he hit her.

Wilson jerked at the
motion, still hanging onto the panic bar. “We need to get rid of her! Do you
want
her following us all the way to the
airport?”

“Don’t
worry, princess, I know what I’m doing,” Sternes grinned. Ahead was another
curve, one tight enough that he didn’t dare to take it less than properly. He
eased off on the gas as he entered it, and then pushed on the pedal more as he
went around the turn to keep control. The truck leaned heavily to the right,
enough that he started to worry and he heard Wilson’s breath hissing through his teeth
beside him.

A moment
later, they were through and on a straightaway along the edge of a hill that
sloped down through thin pine trees to their right. From the look of it, ahead
of them the road switch backed into a curve even tighter than this one had been
in order to cross over the face of the hill again in the other direction. In a
real car with a tuned engine and proper tires, this road would be a blast to
drive on.

Still,
fun as it was, he didn’t want to take any more of these turns at high speed,
even if that high speed was the crawling pace that was all this beast could
manage. He also agreed with Wilson
in not wanting to deal with an angry vampire that
wasn’t
chained to a chair when they reached the airport.

He let
the van drift slightly to the left, as if he’d overcompensated while
straightening out of the turn. Through the passenger wing mirror, he saw the
sedan move over to the right side of the road, nearly onto the soft shoulder.

“Hang
onto your panties,” he told Wilson.

Wilson looked at him.
“What?”

The
vampire gunned her motor and raced forward into the free space he’d so
conveniently left beside him. If he had been drifting due to overcompensation,
she likely would have been able to get in front of them. Instead, Sternes
pulled the wheel hard to the right and the truck responded.

There was
a massive, crashing sound as the side of the cube truck hit the sedan. The truck
shook at the impact, but Sternes kept the wheel turned hard into the car. The
vampire driving it frantically pushed back, but while she was stronger than he
was, there was no contest when it came to the relative weights of their
vehicles and the laws of physics.

Her right
side front wheel caught the soft shoulder of the road, thick with pine needles
and the heavy roots of trees. He pushed harder against her, Wilson ducking
despite the closed passenger window as sparks flew up past him, and suddenly
Sternes could see the sedan itself as it was launched up off something hidden
on the shoulder, something slanted enough to form a ramp. The car dropped back
down again and went over the edge of the steep hill beside the road, crashing
in amongst the trees and bushes below.

Sternes
had to fight a bit to get the truck back into the center of the road. The right
front wheel wasn’t turning as well as it should and he suspected that it had
taken a considerable amount of damage, but he didn’t really care. As long as it
got them to the plane, it didn’t matter.

He
grinned at Wilson.
“Piss yourself yet?” he taunted.

Wilson only glared at
him.