Read The Vampire Diaries: Bound By Blood (Kindle Worlds Novella) Online
Authors: J.R. Rain
The Vampire Diaries: Bound By Blood (Kindle Worlds Novella)
HE
V
AMPIRE
D
IARIES
OUND
BY
B
LOOD
HE
V
AMPIRE
D
IARIES
OUND
BY
B
LOOD
J. R. Rain
Kindle Worlds
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2013 by J. R. Rain.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program. All characters, scenes, events, themes, plots, and related elements of The Vampire Diaries remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Alloy Entertainment LLC / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., its affiliates, or licensors.
For more information on the Kindle Worlds publishing program:
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All Rights Reserved.
Published by Kindle Worlds
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Digital ISBN: 9781477859247
To L. J. Smith.
Thank you for your genius.
I just don’t have it in me to write: “Dear Diary.” It seems kind of lame, even girlish, if you ask me, but Stefan seems to be into it. Same with Elena. So, here’s my take on the self-confessional habit:
Dear Bloody Diary,
My name is Damon Salvatore. I killed again today. Two campers, two kills, two nicely drained bodies. Camping in Mystic Falls is hazardous to one’s health, especially these days. They had a death wish, if you ask me.
A wish that I fulfilled.
After all, how many have to die in these very woods before people get the idea that:
Here be monsters.
More importantly, my search for the Four Elements is proving futile. It’s hard to look for something when you have no clue what it looks like. Or, even if it exists.
But last night was the second meteorite in three years. And that one was a doozy, blazing across the sky in all its glory … and heralding something else.
Something big.
That is, it will be if I can just find it.
At the very least, I need to figure out what the hell it looks like.
D. Salvatore
I was in my office eating a bologna sandwich and watching highlights from Virginia Tech’s worst season in 20 years when
she
walked into my life.
She was a dead ringer for Veronica Lake, with that pale, silky hair swept over one eye and those bow-shaped lips that were plumped up to a quarter-pout. She was curvy in all the right places and lean in the others. Chic high heels supported a pair of shapely legs peeking from beneath a mid-thigh navy skirt and matching blazer. For a millisecond, I saw a wink of lacy white camisole as she peered at me through the half-open door.
I blinked and turned off the YouTube video. In fact, I almost pinched myself.
I had a big mouthful of sandwich, and I chewed as discreetly as possible.
She stood there shyly, but in a way that suited her.
It wasn’t often that a beautiful woman graced my humble office. Hell, it wasn’t often that
any
clients graced my office. These days, investigation gigs were few and far between, which I didn’t mind much, but my landlord did. Especially when I was late again with my rent. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite pretty enough to bat my eyelashes and pay with my good looks, so I did have to take a case every now and then.
Her pretty chin trembled as she half opened the door.
Damn. Poor kid.
“Come on in,” I said, hurriedly chewing.
The woman had been crying, that much was obvious. (I wasn’t an ace detective for nothing.) She stood just inside my open door, looking a little bit hesitant and a lot beautiful. Her misty eyes told me she was about to tell me a story that would get me so choked up that I wouldn’t even care if she could pay me. She was that gorgeous. That classy. And that vulnerable. I quickly swallowed the bite of sandwich.
“Can I help you?” I asked, my throat dryer than I would have liked.
“Are you a private investigator?” Her voice was confident, but I could detect a hint of doubt in my abilities.
“To the envy of all my friends, I am indeed a licensed private investigator,” I said. “Would you like to come in? I have coffee.”
She thought about it longer than I would have liked. These days, private eyes were getting pushed out of work by the Internet. Most people could track—a.k.a. stalk—anyone they wanted via the Internet. Although I wasn’t a professional stalker, I had once made a good living by locating people who didn’t want to be found. Now, I waited for cases from the odd housewife who suspected her husband of cheating, or the even rarer husband who suspected his wife of cheating. I got why people thought private dicks were sleazy. I
felt
sleazy sometimes because I followed sleazy people who did sleazy things. I especially felt dirty after I took zoom-lens evidence photos of marital cheating in progress. However, I took whatever work came my way. It was a sleazy job, but somebody had to do it and pay the rent. That someone was me.
Looking at her misty blue eyes, my first thought was that her hubby was cheating on her. She looked way too nice to have sex. Yeah, a real angel face. My second thought was that she should definitely get back at the jerk. With me, of course.
Okay, maybe I
was
that sleazy detective, after all.
Finally, she nodded and came in. “Yes, coffee would be fine.”
I got up a lot less smoothly than I should have and went around my crumb-strewn desk. “Cream and sugar?” I only had dehydrated Coffee-Mate but cream sounded classier.
“Yes and two.”
My hand was shaking a little as I reached for the guest mug that was least likely to taste like pencils. I poured her a cup of my best joe. I might skimp on the office rent, but never the coffee.
“Is now a good time to talk?” she asked. “Or should I make an appointment?”
“You’re in luck,” I said. I hadn’t had anyone call me for an appointment in maybe two months. “My next appointment just canceled. I’m all yours.”
Angel Face.
“Really?” she said, her eyes innocent and trusting.
I brought the coffee over and handed it to her. She looked up at me with what I would classify as gratitude, so I coughed up the truth. “No. I lied,” I said. “And
lying
is what private eyes sometimes do to get information. We’re good at it. I’m good at it.”
“That’s not really something to be proud of,” she said, taken aback.
“You would think differently,” I said as I slipped back around my desk with my own coffee mug in hand, “if my skills were able to help you. Speaking of which, how can I help you?”
She processed what I said and nearly got up to leave. Luckily, my coffee must have tasted good—or the warm mug felt comforting in her hand. Or maybe it was my encouraging smile that did her in … or the relaxing ambiance of my simple office with its cluttered desk and foldout client chairs. At least she wasn’t put off by the scar on the side of my neck … a horrific scar that reached up almost to my ear and plummeted to well below my collar.
Or, perhaps, she was just plain desperate.
“I need help, Mister….”
“Long,” I said. “Max Long.” I said it like:
Bond. James Bond.
You only get one chance to make a first impression.
She nodded. “I need help, Mr. Long.”
“What kind of help?”
“Someone killed my sister and her boyfriend.”
I was about to lift my own coffee mug when I paused in mid-lift. Steam wafted up between us, obscuring the blonde woman in front of me. “Killed them?”
“Yes. And I want you to help me find the killer.”
I studied her for a heartbeat or two.
“What does the Sheriff say?” I finally asked.
I hadn’t worked a murder case in a long time. Correction: I had
never
worked a murder case. My cases consisted of cheating spouses, background checks, workers’ comp claims, and the odd security detail. In fact, my last job had been undercover work at the Mystic Falls Hospital, trying to find the culprit behind the thefts of their missing blood supply. I never did find the bastard, although I was pretty sure that damn hospital was haunted as hell. Moving shadows, footsteps without anyone nearby, and disembodied breathing sounds were commonplace. The disconcerting feeling that someone was watching me was commonplace, too. It was kind of freaky, truth be known. I’d had dreams of that place, nightmares where a tall man with a long face and Hollywood hair was telling me to forget what I saw. Of course, I could never remember what I saw, but dreams were weird like that sometimes.
Angel Face said, “Sheriff Forbes and her team klutzes aren’t saying much. It makes me wonder if they are even investigating, which is why I came to you.”
“Sheriff Forbes is a good sheriff.” It wasn’t the first time I had defended the lady sheriff.
“Tell me that, Mr. Long, when someone you love has died, and you feel stonewalled by the local police.”
I nodded. “Frustrating, I imagine. And painful.”
“You have no idea.”
She sipped daintily from her coffee mug, her pinky finger actually sticking out at a 90-degree angle. She’d had etiquette training, which didn’t surprise me. In this town, there was a lot of old money, and a lot of people who still held onto the past niceties. Back when etiquette training was popular for the upper class, she’d obviously had the white gloves and ankles-kept-crossed seminars. This woman was all upper class. If I had to guess, I would say she was descended from one of the founding families. From what I understood, the founding families, of which Sheriff Forbes was a card-carrying member, took care of their own. So, why had the sheriff shut her out of their investigation?
First, I needed more information, especially this: “What’s your name?”
“Gracie,” she said. “Gracie Lockwood.”
I noticed that she’d said her name exactly the way I said mine. I hoped she wasn’t mocking me.
“You’re a Lockwood?” I asked.
“A cousin of the Lockwoods you probably know well. I used to live here in Mystic Falls, but it was years ago.”
I frowned, and then snapped my fingers. “You went to high school here.”
She raised her hand in the local claw gesture that emulated a certain popular drink logo. “Go Timber Wolves.” It was like the town’s secret handshake.
“You were a few grades ahead of me. You were crowned Miss Mystic Falls.”
“Not quite, but almost. I always blamed it on the damn corset dress.”
“Bad choice of attire for the Homecoming competition?”
“For the judges—my peers—I was just a little over the top,” she said, smiling in this way that girls sometimes snarked about each other.
Meow.
So, she had a wry sense of wit. “The
boys
seemed to like the dress well enough.”
“I’m sure. So, where are you living now?”
“Burnside.”
I knew the town, of course. Burnside was a poor man’s Mystic Falls. At least, that’s what we’d always called it in high school. There was an alternative high school in Burnside, and some of the Mystic Falls troublemakers ended up out there. There were also a few factories and a lot of farms. Some called Burnside a sister city. I always thought of it as an annoying little brother city. Then again, I was biased. I grew up in Mystic Falls, and good or bad—and there was a lot of bad—I loved my creepy little hometown.
“So, you could say I started high school in Mystic Falls, and finished in Burnside.”
“You were a problem child.”
She gave me a half smile. I sensed from her that her nature was to have fun, to enjoy life, but that recent events had dragged her down. A murdered sister would do that to someone. “I was just being me,” she said, “but the Lockwoods had a name to uphold.”
“He was mayor.”
“And a dick,” she said.
“Such harsh words for your uncle, but you’re right.” I recalled seeing him years ago when he’d actually smacked his son over at the Mystic Grill. “But we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. It’s not proper.”
She nodded and looked down at her lap, where she was nervously working over a tattered cloth napkin that had seen better days. Our eyes met over our shared faux pas and she blushed just the tiniest bit.
“I told her not to camp here,” said Gracie, looking away. “I mean, who camps in Mystic Falls these days? How many people have to die in these woods before people get the idea that it’s not safe here? If you ask me, it was a godsend that I was sent out of this town to go to a wayward girl’s finishing school. But Burnside has been good to me. Safe for me.”
She had a point. The sheer number of deaths in this town had been staggering, along with the numerous incidents of supernatural activity. Fires breaking out as spontaneous combustion. Reports of hauntings. Of actual wolves running in the streets. Even, of vampires. All were whisperings, of course. All laughed off. Nervously. Truth was, something was happening to this town, something damn strange. One would think that with all of the strange occurrences, I would actually be a busy private eye, but that wasn’t the case. Most people didn’t talk about the happenings. They swept them under the proverbial rug. Most local people, in my view, were carrying with them a lot of secrets.
A helluva lot of secrets.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Gracie’s family, of course, had suffered some of the greatest losses. So, I said, “I’m sorry to hear about your sister.”
“So, you will help me?”
“There is the matter of payment,” I said uncomfortably, even though it was how I made my living. I had sympathy for her. Too much, in fact.
She pulled out a checkbook and raised her eyebrows in a “how much” question. We quickly agreed on my fee, and she wrote me a check that had her name imprinted on it, but no address. It was my first client check in a week. My landlord would be pleased. She next gave me her business card and wrote down her home address on the other side. I flipped over the card when she handed it to me. Gracie worked as a real estate agent.
Now I realized that her navy skirt suit was a real estate business suit. Now, I could see the pinholes where she usually affixed her Realtor’s name tag when she went out on her gigs. I didn’t have a name tag on and I was glad I didn’t.
“Nice picture on your business card,” I said.
“Thank you. They made me do it. I always hate having my picture taken,” she said humbly.
“Me, too,” I said. I paused. “When did your sister die?”
“Last week.”
“It didn’t make the news.”
Gracie laughed bitterly. “You know a town is in trouble when the murder of two people doesn’t even warrant a mention in the local news.”
“So, what did Sheriff Forbes say when you two spoke?” I asked gently.
“That they’re still looking into it, but they think it’s an animal attack. The same old crap. You would think that Grendel was lurking in our woods.”
I raised my eyes. “A
Beowulf
reference? I’m impressed.”
“Just because I went to alternative high school, Mr. Long, doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good student.”
“Point taken. Why do you think your sister was murdered?”
“Because she called me and told me that something was out there.”
A very cold chill swept over me. In fact, the chill seemed to extend to my desk where a small pile of papers rustled. Obviously, I had left a window open in the office. “Did she say what was out there?”
“She didn’t say. She was too busy screaming.”
“You heard your sister die? Over the phone?”
“Every strangled gasp and squeal, Mr. Long. Now, do you see why I want answers?”
I nodded, and with that, she stood, adjusted her skirt and left my office. She looked just as good walking away as she did walking in.
When she was gone, and when I had finally closed my mouth, I pulled up my Internet browser and did a web search on the latest missing person case to hit Mystic Falls. I found it quickly enough, noting that typing in the words “Missing Person” and “Mystic Falls” turned up far more hits than a small town should ever have.
That was nothing new. I knew this about my town. Hell, I accepted it about my town. Mystic Falls was about as gothic as a town could get without having haunted house tours. And I was the Sherlock who was going to mine the clues in my first homicide case. A double homicide case, no less.
I read through the police reports. First, there had been a search for the missing campers, who’d been missing for two days. The local towns of Burnside and Charlottesville had even lent a hand with some officers and volunteers. After all, strings of violent crimes did sometimes cross town limits, and they sure as hell didn’t want it crossing into theirs. I suspected that the name “Lockwood” had something to do with that. After all, once word had hit the media that a Lockwood cousin was missing, the town went buzzing again. That she and her boyfriend had both been found dead a few days after they disappeared was really no surprise to anyone. It was par for the course in Mystic Falls that no one who ever went missing had been found safe and sound. No one. Not even a lost puppy. If people went missing here, they were as good as dead.
That nothing else was mentioned in the papers about the murders didn’t surprise me either. This town had an uncanny ability to keep news of any deaths remarkably quiet. And these two deaths were no different. Most intriguing, there was no word about how they had died. No reassurance of “just animal attacks.” No murders or accidents reported. Just that the two hikers had been found dead. End of story as far as anyone in authority was concerned, apparently.
I could be wrong, but I smelled a cover-up.
I unlocked my gun safe.
“Hello, Maggie,” I greeted my piece.
