Love Me to Death (Underveil, #1)(77)

“No. Don’t stop. You’re not cheating. You’re not f*cking me. You’re getting strong so you can save the guy you want to f*ck.”

He had that right. Boring thoughts… Drying paint. Being stuck in traffic. Logging entries in the research journal. Looking at slides through a microscope. Vacuuming the blue velour sofas. Folding clothes.

His body relaxed, and she kept monotonous thoughts running through her head. And then, the visions started. Nik was chained by his ankles and wrists to a stone wall like out of some medieval horror movie, being questioned by a huge Slayer wearing black leather. The Slayer held a club like the kind cops used. She couldn’t hear anything, like watching TV with the volume turned off, but the man would talk, and when Nik didn’t answer, he would hit him in the head with the club. Over and over and over, he slammed the club into Nik’s head until blood ran from his nose and mouth and his body went limp. Then he turned to talk to someone else in the room.

“Enough,” Ricardo whispered from far, far away. “Stop now, Elena.”

Like an app being closed in her brain, the images stopped. Still latched on to his neck, her current reality replaced the horror she had just seen. She pulled away and her canine teeth retracted. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Your thoughts were a jumble. All I got was no, no, no.”

She stared down at the bound vampire, still horrified by what she’d seen in the vision. Before her eyes, the marks on Ricardo’s neck closed and faded. Nik was immortal. His wounds would fade, too, if she could get there in time.

“She has visions. She saw him beaten,” the vampire said, obviously hearing her thoughts. “Only seers can see the present or future. It is not a Dhampir ability at all. What the hell is she?”

The two men exchanged glances.

“What did you see, Elena?” Stefan asked in a calm, soothing voice across from where Ricardo was bound to the seat.

“They are torturing him.” Her voice was so low she wasn’t sure she had said it out loud.

“Of course they are,” Ricardo said. “That’s not helpful information. What else did you see?”

“Nothing. Only another Slayer—huge with long, black hair. He was beating him.” Elena shuddered. “And there was someone else in the room. Someone I didn’t see.”

“He will survive a beating. He has many times,” Stefan said, taking her hand.

“Let me out of this chair. I need to teach her how to mask her thoughts. I have a suspicion of who the third person was. Let me out now!” Ricardo demanded. Margarita removed the silver cuffs, but left him tied down. He stared at Elena for a moment, then disappeared, leaving the empty net and ropes intact.

She spun around to find him sitting up in the cockpit. What the hell? He could have teleported out of the bindings at any time.

“No,” he answered. “The elven cuffs kept me from teleporting. And the bindings prevented me from grabbing you and biting you back—because I would have. I did my duty so that you can do yours,” he said over the hum of the motors. Then he said something else, but she couldn’t quite hear him.

“What?”

He motioned for her to approach. She did so, tentatively.

“That is exactly how it works. Extra noise blocks the words. It’s like humming in your head. Hell, you can really hum if you want to. It will muffle your thoughts. Try it. Think of something specific while you hum and let’s see if I can hear it.”

Stefan slid into the pilot’s seat. She started humming, then thought of how she needed to change in to cold weather gear before they landed in Romania.

He turned in his chair to face her. “Excellent. I only got humming and a couple of syllables. Get in the habit of doing that now, before you get there. Soon, you will not need to hum out loud, but for the time being, it’s safer that way. You can sing, too, if you want to. It jumbles all the thoughts you transmit.”

She settled back in her chair next to Margarita, but he continued staring at her. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

He smiled and turned back around. He was terribly handsome, and with that accent, Elena was sure he had the choice of any woman he wanted. He shot a look over his shoulder at her and arched a brow.

Shit. She immediately began to hum “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”



She didn’t remember drifting off, but Elena awakened to the plane motors growing louder and louder, and then the plane pitched hard to the right as it banked into a turn. Something was wrong.

“He’s landing at a small, private landing strip in the mountains,” Margarita explained. “Nothing is wrong.”

“Can you read minds, too?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s a very rare talent. Only the oldest and strongest vampires can do it. Less than half a dozen, probably.”

Her brother didn’t look older than thirty. “He’s one of the oldest vampires?”

She smiled. It was clear she was proud of her brother. “Ricardo is special. He was born with the gift.”

“I bet that made it tough growing up.”

She grinned. “A pain in the ass. But I effectively block him all the time now.”

The plane banked even harder, and Elena checked her seat belt. In the cockpit, Stefan seemed calm and collected. Maybe this was normal.