The Vampire Diaries: Out of my Mind (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)
Read The Vampire Diaries: Out of my Mind (Kindle Worlds Novella) Online
Authors: Jenna Elliot
She tugs on my earlobe with her teeth, licks along the edge. “You’re too willful to be a minion, darling.”
“Then compel me. I’ll kill everyone you want me to kill and fuck you blind every night. Or bring other people around for you to kill and fuck. Whatever you want. Plus, I’m a fantastic cook. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
She leans her head on my shoulder. She is thinking about it. My heart leaps.
“No, thank you,” she whispers against my ear. She gently slaps my chest as punctuation and slips her arms from around me. Her weight shifts, she’s standing up. This conversation is ending, it can’t be, I’m not done, I’m not ready. I tally, I whir, I wrack my brain, rifling through old kills to remember some desperate attempt I could use, any other tactic left to get out of this. Be creative. Ha.
I hear a footstep in the doorway behind me and I know that step. My heart smashes in shards because now none of it matters anymore. All hope is lost, it is over, it is done.
“Rebekah.”
It’s Elena. She’s here.
Chapter 7
I am splitting in two.
Elena is here. I want to see her, warn her, but my back is to the door and Rebekah presses on my shoulder, anchors me to the ground. She is so much stronger, so much older. She is geological, she might as well be stone. She pets me like a poodle. “We’re a little busy right now. Would you come back later?”
“I know what you did to him,” Elena says. Her voice breaks, she is unprepared. I will eat her, I know it. “And it has to end.”
Rebekah teases my ear. “Well, now that you’re here, he can finally finish his assignment.” Her fingers feel unfamiliar without the slickness of my blood on them. She tilts my face up to hers. “Right, love?”
I swallow, dart my eyes toward the door.
“I can’t stop him,” Elena says and it is nothing less than the truth. No one can stop me.
Rebekah steps back. “Have at it,” she says, and if I move slowly enough the future will never come. But it has to, here it is, and I am turning to face Elena. The hook is roaring like a rabid fan at a prize fight.
She glows, vibrates with defiance. Her eyes lock with mine and the hook yanks so hard, so fast that I blur to her, right there in front of her, no personal space, breathing her breath. “You shouldn’t be here,” I say and I want that to be it but the hook has so much more to say. “But you couldn’t resist, could you? Sweet little Elena: martyr, moron, peril whore.”
“I couldn’t let you take this all on yourself. You needed help.”
“From a blood bag with a hero complex? Unless you’re offering up a sip, I don’t need anything from you.”
“Will it help?”
“Will what help?”
“A sip.”
The hook spreads a wide, predatory smile across my face.
“I think I understand now,” she insists. “All of this -- the mean little digs, pushing me away, trying to kill Alaric, coming here – it was all to prevent yourself from hurting me, or turning me into a vampire, or killing me, wasn’t it?” Close enough, and it’s a relief to hear that she put it all together, or almost anyway. But it doesn’t amount to a damn thing because it won’t save her. I will still kill her, I can’t not.
Rebekah is steel and velvet. “Break, dear. He was supposed to break you. Creatively. But so far I’m terribly disappointed.”
The hook drills into all my nerves at once. I cough against the sheer weight of agony. “It’s impossible,” I protest. “She’s unbreakable.”
“Everyone has a weakness,” Rebekah purrs.
The hook is impatient, it slams my hips against Elena’s. I am a sledgehammer. “Watch,” I toss at Rebekah over my shoulder. I am a tangle of anticipation and horror and delight. “You are nothing to me, to any of us, but blood. Stupid, chasing after vampires like a goddamn groupie. All any of us wants is to eat you.”
“Not all of you.”
“Your beloved Stefan drained his way up and down the eastern seaboard.”
“He’s better now. So are you.”
I punch the doorframe and let the blood rush in, feel heavy, engorged eye sockets and the hook bathes in blood lust. “You’re wrong, Elena,” I seethe because about this I am entirely right and if I could tattoo it on the surface of her mind, I would. “I am a ruthless killer. I have killed hundreds, thousands of people, including
your mother
. I killed my own best friend several times, including once
today
. And I am going to kill you, too.” Snap her neck. Let the blood pour, hot and thick, down your throat.
“Not anymore. Not after everything you’ve done to protect me. I
know
you. I trust you.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Rebekah calls from across the room. I hear a flip. She’s reading a goddamn magazine.
But the hook is a huge fan of Killer Damon and gets to my mouth before I can stop it. “After I kill you, I’m going back to your house to turn Jeremy inside out. To drink him dry.”
Elena shakes her head, sets her jaw. “You’re just saying that because you’re compelled. I know that you’d protect Jeremy with your life because I love him. You’ve changed.”
She is adorable and woefully misguided. “I
can’t
change. I’ll always be a vampire.”
“Keep fighting, Damon,” she whispers. “I forgive you for everything. I know this isn’t you.”
“Don’t,” I grunt. A dream wants to unfold, I try to refuse it but the hook grabs on. A bite, a tear along Elena’s collarbone, lapping the blood up, and why not, pressing my hips against her, getting off on it while she whimpers and weakens. How’s that for broken? I cannot be trusted, nothing can stop me from hurting her and even then she will remain whole and I will still have more work to do. I am Janus, two faces, one that can only mourn how I’m failing her, the other eager to devour our future. “Why are you here?” I moan, because she has never had a worse idea than coming here.
“I finally realized that everything you’ve done since Stefan rescued you, you’ve done because you love me. You told me how you felt, but now? Now I really see it, I see how powerful it is. So I’m here to help you fight.”
“Good luck,” Rebekah laughs.
Elena glances at her, stifling a glare, then turns her face back to me and it is somehow calm. “And listen, you have to know:
I love you too
. Use it for strength, for hope. I love you and I don’t care if Rebekah’s listening. I need
you
to know how I feel, no matter what happens.”
Before I can contemplate love or hope or strength, the hook squeals. It adores this turn of events, because if she loves me then the stakes are higher and she is once again breakable. It tries to gain control of my mouth but not this time, dammit. I bite my lip hard, draw blood against anything the hook can say to ruin this moment I have wished for in abject desperation. I can’t speak. Inside, the hook and I are fighting to the death, swords and lances and machetes, so the most I can do to show her, to thank her, to reassure her is to close my eyes. My body slumps against her, just barely, but I hear her breath calm and that is it, that is our moment, our first and last.
Now I am flung away, flying across the room, crashing against the far wall. I take out a painting, feel the frame crack against my shoulder. I am a heap on the floor and Rebekah is wrapping her fingers around Elena’s throat. “I honestly don’t know what the big deal is about you.” Squeeze. “You’re not so special. You’re just meat.”
“Let her go,” I attempt. Yank.
“You had your turn and you failed. Now it’s my turn.”
Can I fight Rebekah? Under her compulsion, is it even possible for me to mount a defense? I test the idea out. I visualize pushing her away from Elena. The hook seems to be okay with this, it still wants to complete its task. Elena is gasping, she looks like a fish, she’s sliding up the door frame. She has no time.
I launch myself at Rebekah, catch her off guard and the momentum spins her into the marble foyer, away from Elena. Thank goodness for slick floors.
“Come on, love. Just kill her and be done with it,” Rebekah calls to me and they are not just words, they are instructions. The hook grows, it swells to fill my entire self. I am nothing but a hook in a skin sleeve.
Elena doesn’t even look scared. She looks content, alive, like she has a secret. “Damon,” she says because that is all we have time for and it is enough. I lay my hands on her shoulders, let them slide down her arms toward her trembling fingers. I want to hold her hands in mine and look into her eyes and have one more moment, one fucking Nicholas Sparks moment before the end, and that’s when I feel it. Metal along her forearm. The dagger.
She is here to fight for me. All I have to do is show up. What little there is left of me.
She nods a nod that says ‘now we both know the whole plan, no need to articulate a single point of it.’ But I have no idea what she’s planning. She can’t possibly have anything resembling a plan. There is no way she can dagger Rebekah. That monster will never let her guard down.
But that isn’t entirely true. And now an idea is brewing, the barest glimpse of a plan and I’m careful not to think it too clearly, I need to satisfy the hook, seduce it.
“Rebekah, get over here,” I croon. “If I’m going to kill her, the least you can do is watch.”
“Watch?” She sounds skeptical but she’s standing up, she’s smoothing her skirt, here she comes. Reel her in.
I grab Elena’s arm hard, the one without the dagger. I whirl her around so she’s leaning her fragile back against my chest and we’re facing Rebekah, posed like a prom picture. “If you’re a good girl, you can have a taste,” I purr, flashing my most lascivious, evil, hungry grin and it is not even remotely a stretch because I am each of those things.
The hook is all fangs and destruction. So is Rebekah, hovering like a vulture inches in front of Elena. So am I, rearing my head back.
I bite.
My fangs sink into her neck. Her blood fills my mouth. And none of the pain, the horror, the fierce, unimaginable agony of resistance these last few days that have felt like years, none of it compares to the sheer bliss of acquiescence.
Only the faintest shadow remains of why I had ever resisted. I will drink and kill and float on this river of perfect joy forever.
Elena shifts in my arms, jabs outward, and I remember the dagger and the plan and why I am filling with Elena’s sweet blood.
I look up and Rebekah is glaring at me but the glare is turning stale as her body darkens. She is collapsing forward onto the dagger. Elena pushes and Rebekah topples away, gray and vacant.
The hook is gone. Elena saved me.
And then she crumples at my feet, her hand fluttering at her neck. Blood is everywhere, running down her clothes. The gash is enormous. It was that kind of bite, the kind that doesn’t leave room for seconds.
“Damon,” she gasps as she tries to stem the bleeding with fingers but there is no way to stem the bleeding, she will be dead in minutes.
I rip at my wrist and cradle the nape of her neck with my other hand. Her eyes are starting to roll back. “I can’t lose you,” I breathe, I plead, and it is everything I can do not to force her but I have already taken so much from her that I grit my teeth and hold out my wrist. We have been here before and if she rejects my blood this time I don’t know what I will do, I will have killed her and I cannot live without her. “
Please
, Elena.” Elena. Please.
She is still as death and I am sure I have lost everything. But then her eyes close and she opens her mouth for me so I press my wrist against her lips. She has so little strength that I
will
my blood to pump harder, but of course there is nothing I can do except hope that it’s not too late, that I didn’t kill her, that she isn’t already gone.
Moments the size of canyons pass and then I feel a faint tug. Then more. She is drinking, her eyes are opening. Her wound – my wound – is knitting together. It is gruesome and miraculous.
I exhale and I intend it to be nothing more than a sigh but it takes me by surprise. It is a torrent, an overwhelming cascade of relief and monumental regret and uncountable memories of terror. My breath comes in wild heaves, it rips through my voice. It is over. I never really believed it would be over.
Somewhere outside of myself I hear her, I feel her palm along my jaw, “it’s okay… it’s okay.” I lean against the door frame, let my head fall back. I breathe, I have to refill myself with something, replace the hook, and air will do for now. “I love you, Damon. You’re going to be okay.” There’s a hitch in her breath and I know she’s crying, this poor unbreakable girl. I’m gutted. I open my eyes and she’s crying, yes, but she’s smiling, too. “We did it. Go team.”
She licks her bottom lip and for a split second I think it’s because she’s disgusted to have my blood on it but then I look into her eyes and I know it’s not. She leans toward me, her eyelids flutter closed, and she opens her lips over mine.
Kisses mean different things. When I kissed her on the porch, it meant “I am waiting for you.” When she kissed me on my deathbed, it meant “I accept you.” And now it is conceivable, in fact it seems entirely possible, that there will be time for all different kinds of kisses, meaning all kinds of things, from “good morning” to “take off your shirt” to “more.” But for both of us, I know this kiss means “I love you.”
I gather her body close and she’s pressing herself against me carefully, folding herself onto my lap. I hold her in my arms and I never want to stop kissing her.
She smiles against my mouth. “Let’s go home,” she says.
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