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

in movies. Maybe he was a werewolf instead. “Werewolf?” she
hedged when he didn’t reply to her first guess.
    He shook
his head. “No,” he said to both.
    “Please,”
she cried. “I haven’t hurt anyone.”
    He
snorted. “As if that would matter.” He looked up at the ceiling and then went
back to the work bench. He dragged a box out from underneath it, one that was
obviously heavy just from the way he had to strain to move it, and returned a
few minutes later with a long length of chain in his hands.
    “No,
please, don’t. You can’t do this.”
    He
ignored her and attached one end of the chain to the shackles around her
wrists, the other to a bolt inset in the floor. With the vervain in her system,
the weight of the chain in addition to the shackles made her arms too heavy to
lift and she could only lie there as he finished what he was doing. Once she
was secure, he tossed the long length down and stomped back over to his
equipment.
    “Please,”
Elena tried again. “Why are you doing this? What do you want with me?”
    He didn’t
answer her, didn’t even acknowledge he’d heard her. Instead he picked up a cell
phone from the table, and she heard him typing a number on the keypad. Elena
held her breath, hoping to yell for help to whoever he was calling on the other
end, but she realized quickly enough that it wouldn’t make any difference.
    “Jennings, I caught a
vampire. It’ll take longer than I hoped to get the product to you, though.”
    Another
man’s voice sounded through the phone, tinny but still somehow cold. “That’s not what you promised, Wilson.”
    Wilson turned his back to
her, still talking. “I know, but the vervain I used on her is affecting the blood.
It’s too weak to heal anybody this way. I have to wait for it to clear her
system before I can try again.”
    So she
wasn’t bait or being used to make hybrids this time. She was just a random
vampire taken hostage for the healing qualities in her blood. Somehow that was
even worse than having Damon, Tyler, Rose, or Stefan grab her.
    Jennings snorted on the
other end of the phone. “You think you
can contain her without vervain in her blood?”
    She saw Wilson’s back tighten.
“I’m a researcher. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
    Jennings gave another
snort. “I want the first delivery of the
goods in the next twelve hours, or I’ll find another source for my blood
suckers.” He hung up.
    Wilson grumbled something
that Elena couldn’t quite hear through the terrified, silent screaming inside
her mind. He put the phone down, leaning against the table and glaring at it,
before he turned to study her.
    He didn’t
see her as anything other than an insect, she realized, something he could make
money off. She stared back at him, but no words were able to get past her lips.
He wouldn’t care, and when he finally turned and stomped out of the room,
slamming the metal door behind him, she closed her eyes.
    Damon, she prayed. Bonnie. Find me, please.

    Bonnie
was spreading the word about Elena’s disappearance. She’d called Caroline and
was at Sheriff Forbes’ station telling Caroline and her mother what happened.
It was supposed to be 24 hours before the police looked into matters of missing
people, but Bonnie was fairly positive the Sheriff would make an exception for
her. Damon just shrugged and told her to do whatever, but if the Sheriff didn’t
give him this favor, he was going to have long and bloody words with her about
debts owed.
    For the
most part, he was confident that he could find Elena on his own. With his
heightened senses and absolute familiarity with the very smell and sound of
her, he’d track his Elena down.
    Damon
moved through the darkness to start his hunt, and no one saw him go.

    By the
time the sun rose, Elena was feeling better. The vervain that had crippled her
was fading out of her system, and she could feel her strength returning to her
enough to stand up and look around.
    Her
chains