Roots and Wings

Noelle’s heart felt like an unwelcome monster in her throat. He knew. He knew god damn everything and she was so screwed. She wanted to scream and to beg and to cry and to pray for Katherine to come and save her but she knew it was all useless. So she kept her jaw clenched and her eyes dry and stared Damon down because she wouldn’t go down without a fight. She’d go down fighting. Like her father.

Damon finished his drink then, threw it into the fireplace and his body blurred and he moved faster than any human eyes could see. Noelle’s animal like eyes though followed him easily as he sped across the room and crawled onto the bed, his fingers wrapping lithely around her throat. “Where is she?” he hissed.

Her thoughts jumbled as she tried desperately to find a way out of this. Katherine had warned her that Damon was not supposed to know of her existence. Damon thought she was trapped in the ruins of Fell’s church with the rest of the vampires she had turned. Damon thought that his Katherine was long gone and there was nothing he could do about it. She didn’t know why she was so apt to keep to Katherine’s plan. But Katherine was right…she did owe her life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Noelle choked, gasping for air around Damon’s tight fingers. “Who the hell is Katherine?” Noelle knew deep in her gut this would work. Damon was so desperate for answers, so desperate for Katherine to be alive and well that he would jump to any conclusions. He couldn’t compel her so there was no way to force her to tell him the truth but something told her that he would find a way to make her speak. Or rather, he would try.

His fingers left her throat and wrapped around her jaw, crushing the bone and causing an animal like whimper to escape her throat. “Don’t lie to me, kitten. I don’t like liars. I like to hurt them,” Damon growled.

“I’m telling you the truth, Damon. I don’t know who Katherine is,” she mumbled around her destroyed jaw.

He released her then, and she groaned as her jaw tried to heal itself. She knew it would take days for it to be painless. Damon swung his leg around the other side of her, so he was straddling her. He grabbed her by the back of the head, lifting her so that he was able to easily access her throat or possibly just to get better eye contact.

“Liar,” he whispered and buried his teeth into her throat. She refused to scream. She refused to allow any pain to escape her lips, but that didn’t stop the lone tear to stray from the corner of her eye and drip down her temple. He pulled away then, blood coating his mouth and dripping down her throat and onto the bed. “You taste good, kitten,” he purred, nuzzling her neck, smearing the blood up onto her cheek and chin. He then grabbed her wounded jaw once more. “Who was on the phone then?”

She wracked her brain; searching the information that Katherine had given her about Stefan and Damon’s past. Anything to get her out of this mess. If words didn’t work then there were other things she could do. Things that Katherine had spent years teaching her—things Katherine had done to make Noelle the perfect panther.

“A girl I met a month ago. Her name’s Lexi,” Noelle said, her mind running rampant. “She paid me to track you down, to make sure you were nowhere near her brother Stefan. She just told me to keep you away, that’s all she said, I swear,” Noelle said, her words coming out fast and fluid as she felt her story coming together.

Damon relinquished his hold on her then, and she felt him deflate against her body. “Lexi…” he muttered, before rolling off of her and laying beside her, completely defeated. “Wonderful.”