Conspicuous Lies (Book 1 In The Conspicuous Series)

02: The Girl Who Died Of Pain

I sneak through the woods of the Lockwood estate, wearing ripped jeans and one of Stefans old hoodies that I still have, trying to spot the small brown house known as the old Lockwood estate maid house. As I come to a clearing, I see the house. There were four tomb vampires, one at each corner of the house. I spot a sharp stick lying on the ground. I pick it up and race over to the vampire on the back right corner. I sneak up on him and plunge the stake through his heart. Veins appear around my eyes as I do so. I move on to the next guy. Making my way across the porch, I hear it creak behind me. I whip around just in time for a syringe to stab me in the chest. My body starts to feel weak as I realize the syringe was filled with vervain. I pass out as the vervain fully enters my system, draining every ounce of energy I have left.

I wake up in a wooden chair in the basement of the old maid house. I'm tied to the chair with barbed wire cords. I look around to see metal tables filled with torture devices for vampires. Stakes, wooden bullets, and wooden spikes fill one table. Guns and cross bows that hold wooden bullets and wooden arrows fill another table. I hear footsteps walking down the stairs. The door creaks open and I see the one person I've hated since day one.
Katherine Pierce.
Also known as Katerina Patrova.
I stare at her with anger as she struts over to me, smirking. "Look who's awake." She taunts. "Aw, man. Look who's still alive." I snap back, shaking my head. Katherine menacingly chuckles, walking over to the table full of wooden arrows. "Now, Amber, you know exactly what I want. So, your going to give it up and tell me where it is or we can do this the hard way." She threatens. I chuckle. "Hmm, I have no idea what your talking about." I say innocently. Katherine throws the arrow at me. It lands directly in the center of my chest. I groan in pain, choking. It made me remember all the things Damon said about me being able to just die from the pain of any sort of torturing.
"Wrong answer. I'll ask you again, where is the Jade?" She asks. I scoff. "If you think a little arrow is going to make me tell you where that necklace is, you've got to be out of your mind." I snap back, staring into her devilish eyes. She throws about a dozen wooden spikes at me. They all land in my stomach, making me whimper in pain. "You ignorant piece of shit!" I shout at her in pain. She chuckles. "You know, a little birdy told me that you can die from simple pain. Must be tough. Considering you get yourself in so much trouble." She comments rudely. I scoff once again but whimper in pain from doing so. She takes a stake and plunges it into my right side. I scream in pain, tears streaming down my eyes. "If you want to keep your life, I advise you to tell me where the necklace is," She starts, waiting for me to answer but I stay silent so she chuckles, "Your silence is deafening."
She sticks a second stake in my other side immediately. I groan and whimper in pain. A tomb vampire, who was standing there the entire time, hands her a third stake. She hovers it over my heart area. "Your little boy toy Damon can't save you now." She comments before raising the stake slightly, ready to plunge it in my heart. "Objection." I hear a familiar voice say. Damom walks into the room with a baseball bat over his shoulder. "Sorry I'm late. I got stuck in traffic." He comments. The tomb vampire, who I've heard Katherine call Jim, immediately raced towards Damon. Damon hits him directly in the stomach, causing him to fly across the room. Katherine immediately flees the house. After taking care of the two other tomb vampires, Damon rushes over to me and unties the ropes bounding me to the chair. I whimper in pain as he does so, half dead and every ounce of my body aching. "Where-where's Stefan?" I manage to studder. "He's fine. Just a little bruised and battered. Not as bad as you." Damon clarifies, lifting me out of the chair gently. He holds me bridal style and races out of the house. We arrive at the Salvatore Boarding house in seconds, when I realize how close it was to the Lockwood estate. Damom enters the house and sets me on the couch. I look to my left to see Stefan approaching with a blonde haired girl to his right and a brown haired girl to his left who looks exactly like Katherine but I'm to exhausted to worry about it. But because I know the girl isn't Katherine, based off of the concerned look on her face and the clothes she wears, I don't recognize either of the girls. Damon rushes to get things as my eyes become fuzzy. "We need to get the stakes and arrow out now." I hear Stefan say. I feel pressure on my chest and then a sharp pain that makes me want to cry out but I am unable to. I feel two other sharp pains on both of my sides from Stefan tugging the stakes out. "Does anyone have any tweezers?" I hear Stefan say. I couldn't see anything, as my eyes were closed from exhaustion. I hear a girl reply but I couldn't make out what she was saying as everything around me was becoming fuzzier and fuzzier. I hear her fumble around in her bag before handing Stefan something. I feel about 11 sharp pains in my stomach as he plucks out each wooden spike. He digs deeper into my skin and muscle, almost to the bone. "I can't get the last one out." I hear him say, struggling. And then it finally came to me.
I was dying. Slowly but surely. There was nothing Stefan or Damon could do to stop it. The pain was to much for me to take. I just wanted to let go so badly. The last wooden spike was to close to my lungs for Stefan to reach without seriously damaging my insides or killing me.
I hear Stefan drop the tweezers on the table and lean back in his chair. "I can't get it out. It's to far in. She's gone." I hear Stefan say. I hear Damon's breathing but that's all I hear. Multiple tears fall on my hand when I realized Damon was crying. Over me. The person I thought he hated. I never thought, in a million years, that Damon would actually care. I figured, if I dyed, the person who killed me would, probably, be Damon. But it turns out, he's the one who would be pained to see me die the most.
I take my last breath and sigh a relief when all the pain lifts off my shoulders. I feel Damon take my hand and hold it close to his mouth. He kisses my hand and starts to cry harder. I hear Stefan weeping in pain from losing his best friend.
And then it hit me.
There was no way in hell I was leaving my friends, sorry, my fanily alone in this world without me.
I fought for my life in every way possible for a, pretty much, dead person. I try to take a breath of air multiple times before, finally, I take a slow but steady breath, trying not to disturb Damon. As I open my eyes, I immediately look over to Stefan, the blond haired girl, and the brown haired girl, putting my finger to my lips to signal to them to be quiet. I look down at Damon weeping into my stomach. I immediately start to cry when I see him like that, crying deeply over me. That's when Damon looks up at me as I smile down at him. "A-amber." He calls, putting his hand on my cheek. I take his hand and look at him with every ounce of love I have left in me. "That's me." I tease before he picks me up, fast but gentle, and hugs me tightly while twirling around the room. He wraps his arms around my waist while I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, letting the hug last for several minutes before he sets me down carefully. "My God, Amber, you scared the crap out of me." He says, looking at me with such love. "Oh, yeah, that was my plan all along. To PRETEND to be dead, for fun." I tease. "Makes sense," Damon chuckles, "But I love you either way."
That comment struck me like a thousand lightning bolts. He asked me if I had feelings for him, yes, but feelings and actual love are to totally different attractions. Did I love him to? Maybe. Should I tell him I love him? Pff, I DO NOT have the confidence to say that four word sentence. Especially now, standing here in just a bra, covered in blood with scars all over my stomach and huge gauges in my sides and chest. "Hey Stefan, could you guys give us a minute?" Damon asks. Stefan nods and leaves the room with the two girls. Damon sees me eyeing the two girls with Stefan and smiles. "That's Caroline and Elena. They know about us so don't worry. Caroline was dying in the hospital from a car accident so I gave her some of my blood to heal her but then Katherine killed her so she became a vampire."
I nod my head, knowing that Katherine would do something like that. "What about that Elena girl? Why does she look so much like Katherine?" I ask. "She's descended from the Patrova family. Her birth mothers name was Isobel. Her birth fathers name was John who is, now, her uncle because his brother took Elena in when she was a baby. Then Isobel, for some reason, came to me to turn her. So I did. Now, a dude named Alaric Saltzman, who is Elena and her brother, Jeremy's, history teacher, is really angry with me because Isobel was his wife." Damon explains in detail. I look at him with wide eyes. "Jeez, you guys have had quite the adventure without me." I tease. Damon chuckles. "But, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk about earlier, before you went to the tomb vampires hideout.
I read your letter and saw that you read mine. I want you to know, Amber, that...I never stopped loving you. And if you hate me like you said in your letter, then be my guest and continue. But I still love you and......
I always will, no matter what happens or how far we are apart. I'll love you till the day I die."