Death opens || Vampire Diaries [S1]

Chapter 8: Channel Crossing

Now, free, by hazard's quirk, from the common ill
Knocking our brothers down, we strike a stance
Most mock-heroic, to cloak our waking awe

⁂

DAMON

We're at the end of the road when we see the crash.

I turn the corner on an old dirt path to see a large SUV tripping over itself with the crunch of denting carapace; glass and painted metal glisten in the air as it turns, littering the ground with debris. It comes to a grinding halt on its back, the cab crushed under the weight, spinning its wheels like an upturned beetle in the dirt.

The sight is almost amusing in a schadenfreudic kind of way. And, honestly, even at this stage in my unlife, there's a part of me that looks at the clear signs of hopelessly trapped prey and thinks easy pickings! So, I can't exactly claim surprise that my thought is apparently a shared one. And it's with a distant sort of interest that I watch the body on the ground untwist its broken bones and stalk toward the half-crushed car. At first, I have no intent to interfere. But all bets are off when I recognize her scream.

Fortunately, the attacker knows what's good for him and scarpers before I've taken more than a few snarling steps from my own door, speeding away before I can make out a face beneath his raised hood. But that's fine. I can always kill him later. At the moment, I'm more concerned for his victim.

Kneeling beside the car, I peer up into her terrified face. She's hanging upside down, trapped against the floor-turned-ceiling by the seatbelt cinched tight around her hips, and tears drip steadily from her liquid dark eyes. Something I thought long since fled stirs painfully in my chest at the sight. I feel the car shift as Z appears beside me, lifting to relieve the pressure gently from the top of the car, but Elena's eyes are glued to me like I'm the answer to all her prayers, and it's so painfully obvious that she was fully expecting to die tonight that I physically feel my heart clench. The sheer weight of her relief is humbling.

"Damon?" she breathes.

"You look stuck," I mutter. Between the two of us, Z and I manage to remove the door from the wreckage, giving us an unhindered view of the trembling girl inside.

"It's my seatbelt," she sobs.

I shush her, kneeling back to her side. "Let me get you out of here."

I take a firm hold on the belt trapping her. "I want you to put your hands on the roof," I instruct. "Just like that. You ready?"

When she nods, I count, "1, 2, 3," and pull with all my strength to dislodge the belt from the seat. I catch her before her head meets the ground, lifting her from the car.

Standing there on the road with this frail human girl held gently in my arms, a sudden protectiveness surges unbidden through me. "Are you ok?" I ask. She doesn't answer but to clutch at my shoulder, her strength quickly failing her as the adrenaline leaves her body. "Can you stand? Is anything broken?"

She shakes her head weakly, and I set her on her feet, keeping a supporting arm around her shoulder. But her knees almost immediately buckle beneath her, and I quickly drop to a crouch beneath her to keep her head from hitting the pavement. "Whoa, you are fading fast Elena." I take her chin in my fingers. "Elena, look at me. Focus. Look at me."

"Why do I look like her?" she mumbles. Her head lolls again, this time into unconsciousness.

Oh, shit.

Z breaks her long silence with a scoff. I glance at her sharply. The expression on her face is so at odds with the current situation that I'm actually tempted to scold her. Baffling. But rather than attempt something so uncomfortably out of character, I silently hook an elbow around Elena's knees and scoop her to my chest. Looks like this road trip is now a party of three.