The Vampire Diaries: A Cage of Burning Light (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Free

biting back
a scream of frustration, and followed him.

    Elena
didn’t know where she was when she woke up.
    At first,
all she knew was pain. Every part of her body hurt, and with the senses of a
vampire, the agony was so much more intense than any she’d felt before. She
wanted to weep, but she felt so weak she wasn’t sure that she could move.
    She was
lying on concrete. It took her long moments to realize that, to understand what
the texture her hands and cheek were pressing against was. It was unforgiving
and cold underneath her sprawled body.
    When
she’d become a vampire, Elena hadn’t thought she’d feel cold again. She could
feel temperature differences, but the contrast between cold as a sensation that
was as intense and honestly marvelous as that of a breath or a kiss versus cold
as a horrible, sucking feeling was immense. Lying here, it had gone back from
being a fascinating experience to something she wanted gone, and she shivered
as she lay there, still too drained to even open her eyes.
    She
wasn’t too weak to have her thoughts race, however, and what they told her made
her want to scream. Someone had kidnapped her? Again? What for this time? Her
Doppleganger blood? As bait? She was a vampire and she still had to end up
playing the victim?
    Elena was
so furious that tears finally leaked out of her eyes and hazed her vision when
she forced them to open. It was a long moment before she was able to blink
everything into focus.
    She lay
on a concrete floor in a large, dusty, mostly empty room, the walls bare and
old, and the floor covered in grease stains and rat droppings.
    It hurt
unimaginably to do so, but Elena rolled onto her back and stared up at the
ceiling. It was metal and flat, some sort of corrugated steel with skylights
cut through it. She could see the clear night sky overhead, a bit of the half
full moon showing at one edge.
    Bonnie
must have been worried when she didn’t show up at the Grill. Elena really hoped
she was looking for her. Bonnie would be able to find her without any trouble
at all. She had a spell she’d used before that would track people she wanted to
find. She just needed some of Elena’s blood in order to cast it.
    She
didn’t have any of Elena’s blood.
    Elena let
out a low breath and focused on trying to lift her arm. It didn’t really want
to move, but she managed to shift her hand enough to push her tangled hair out
of her face.
    “This
isn’t fair!”
    That was
what she was thinking, but she definitely hadn’t said it. Elena licked her lips
and shifted her head enough to look over to where the voice came from.
    To the
right of where she lay, a long work bench stretched along the length of one
wall. It was littered with the sort of paraphernalia that she’d had to use in
chemistry class, and a man was bent over it, working with something she
couldn’t see.
    “Why does
everything have to be so difficult!” he growled to himself.
    Elena
licked her lips. “Hey,” she whispered. She had to clear her throat and tried
again. “Hey.”
    The man
heard her the second time and turned around. It was the stranger she’d bumped
into on the sidewalk.
    What
possible reason could he have to kidnap her? She didn’t know him, and she’d
certainly never done anything to him. Did it even really matter, now that she
was here?
    “Please,”
she whispered. “Let me go.”
    He left
what he was doing and walked closer in order to look down at her face, his own
without expression. Elena couldn’t figure out anything about him, her senses
dulled and painful, and even if she hadn’t been a vampire for long, she still
missed the absolute awareness and power she’d felt before.
    He’d used
vervain on her, crippled her for whatever reasons he had, and bound her wrists
together with shackles.
    “You’re a
witch,” she managed to guess, her voice hoarse and strained. Normal humans
generally didn’t believe vampires were anything more than stories or characters
on television or