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“Please,” Meredith begged, bringing her desperate gaze up to meet Damon’s. She was biting her lip nervously, and a thin trail of her own blood trickled down her chin.
Slipping a cool mask over his surprise—When did this happen? How could I not have known?—Damon heaved a theatrical sigh and tugged the human out of Meredith’s arms. “Wake up,” he said, and shook her gently. The girl’s head bobbled from side to side, her short hair sweeping forward across her cheeks. Meredith had really made a mess of her victim’s neck—it was raw and ripped, blood still streaming out. Damon wrinkled his nose fastidiously. “Come on, now. ” He shook her again, until she blinked blearily up at him.
Efficiently, Damon bit his own wrist and pressed it against the girl’s lips. He forced her to drink a few swallows, enough to make the bites on her throat begin to heal. “That’s enough. ” Without waiting for an answer, he stroked his Power along her mind, pushing for obedience. “You won’t remember what happened. You were out late, and you fell, that’s how you hurt your neck. Everything’s fine. Go home. ”
The girl stared at him blankly and dragged her tongue across her dry lips. “I have to go home,” she muttered. “I was out too late. ”
“Good girl,” Damon said, setting her on her feet and straightening her top. It was a pity about the bloodstains, but there was nothing he could do. “Go on. ”
The girl nodded and staggered off through the parking lot. Damon watched her go and then turned his attention to Meredith.
She was staring at him, her eyes wide and horrified, her chest heaving with panicky panting breaths. Damon could feel warmth radiating off her, and her heart was pounding hard. If Damon hadn’t known better—if he hadn’t seen her long, sharp canines and sensed that little bit of wrongness under her false aura, he would have thought Meredith was still human.
“So…” he said, enjoying her distress just a little bit, now that his shock had faded. “What’s new with you?”
Meredith gulped unhappily. “I was just so hungry,” she said, her voice strained.
Damon shrugged, keeping his expression bland. “You don’t need to explain to me, hunter,” he said. “How long since Jack changed you?”
Meredith rubbed at her face, trying to wipe away the blood and only smearing it across her cheek. “A week,” she said, her eyes downcast. It felt odd, seeing Meredith so humbled. “He was working on me before that, taking me in the middle of the night. I thought I was dreaming. I couldn’t see his face. ”
Damon nodded. “Does anyone else know?” he asked. It wouldn’t be the first time that they’d kept him out of the loop, but he couldn’t believe Elena had known. He would have sensed her shock through the bond between them, and he’d felt nothing but her constant, aching grief.
Eyes widening in horror, Meredith grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him close to her. “You can’t tell them,” she said fiercely. “No one else can know. I’m going to find some way to reverse it. ”
Damon unwrapped Meredith’s fingers from his shirt. With a little thrill, he realized that Meredith’s predicament could be good. He could use this. “Fine,” he told her. “I won’t breathe a word. But there’s something I want you to do. ”
Meredith’s eyes narrowed. It was admirable, Damon thought, how she could go from a quivering wreck to sharply suspicious, pulling herself together in an instant. “What do you want, Damon?”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her with a bitter laugh. “It won’t hurt. Probably. ” She flinched, and he sighed, feeling guilty. “I want you to connect with Jack,” he went on, in a softer tone. “He made you for a reason. Surely he must want you to work with him. ”
Meredith’s mouth opened in an automatic denial, and then she stopped. “You want me to spy on him for you,” she said thoughtfully.
“If we’re going to hunt him, hunter, we need eyes on the inside,” Damon told her. “So, yes, I want you to spy. Where he’s hiding, how many of… you there are, what he’s planning. How to kill him. You said once that I might be the best weapon we had, but I think you are. ”
Meredith’s face was still streaked with blood and tears, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Her eyes, no longer full of shame, were speculative as she thought through the nuances of Damon’s idea. She’d always been practical, this hunter, Damon thought, and was surprised by a flare of affection. Meredith wasn’t his friend, but he did respect her, which was more than he could say for most humans—or vampires.
The corners of the hunter’s mouth went up in a smile—a small one, but a real one. “A secret weapon? That I can do. ”
A weapon, Damon thought. He finally had a weapon against Jack. No, not a weapon, he corrected himself, as Meredith looked up at him and smiled in grim determination. An ally.
Chapter 8
Elena knew she was dreaming. She’d had this dream before.
The apartment stretched out before her, shadowed and deserted. “Stefan?” she called uneasily. Her voice sounded small in her own ears.
As she walked down the endless hall in search of Stefan, the lights snapped off behind her, one after the other, leaving pools of darkness. At the end of the hall, the bedroom door was closed. A tendril of worry curled inside her. There was something wrong, something about Stefan, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was.
“Stefan?” She already knew what would be behind the door—a dark, empty room, the bedroom curtains billowing in the breeze from the open windows. No Stefan. No one anywhere, just loneliness and silence. Full of dread, she slowly lifted one hand to twist the knob.
This time, though, everything changed.
Instead of her familiar bedroom, the door opened to reveal a room she had never seen before.
Inside, a fire burned in a large stone fireplace, throwing flickering shadows across the log walls. It was warm and cozy, but the woman sitting on the couch looked as cold as ice.
She was wearing a long white dress, and her dark hair hung past her shoulders. Her blue eyes were looking straight at Elena. Elena’s heart pounded in terror, and yet, there was something that wouldn’t let her leave. But the woman didn’t move. Blue eyes gazed straight through Elena and off into the distance.
