The Vampire Diaries: A Cage of Burning Light (Kindle Worlds Novella) by L.J. McDonald Page B

didn’t find any of them just yet, which she hoped meant that the pit
was Wilson’s
one big secret. Still, she hoped that Caroline was warning her mother of what
they’d found, and resolved to make sure she let the Sheriff know about any
possible extra booby traps in this place when she showed up. It probably should
be checked out by the bomb squad, not a couple of young women who didn’t even
know what sort of threats could be hiding in here.
    Still, an
absurd curiosity pulled her forward, wanting to see for herself what her friend
had gone through. At the back of the room, Bonnie came to another door, this
one left open and seemingly safe. Bonnie peeked inside and her eyes widened.
    This was
the room Elena told her about, the one she’d been kept prisoner in. It was a
fraction of the size of the main part of the warehouse, likely an office used
by the managers when the building was still being used. There was a work bench
against the wall and some litter, but otherwise the room had been cleaned out.
She could see the jagged hole in the concrete floor where Elena had broken
herself free.
    She could
also see the effect of the skylights, faded now with the sun close to setting
but still there. Light lanced down everywhere in the room, forming a circle of
bars around the central, dark section, all forming the bars of a cage and
unmoving except for the dust that danced through them, specks of brilliance
that she could almost imagine singing some kind of impossible song.
    Caroline
appeared at her shoulder and peered in. “Wow,” she breathed. “That’s actually
beautiful.”
    Bonnie
gave a slow nod, never taking her eyes off the cage. “It is.”
    “Somebody’s
a really twisted person to come up with something like this.”
    Bonnie
thought of Elena, chasing that truck and what she now knew was inside it, and
closed her eyes in worried grief. “Yes,” she agreed. “They are.”

    The man Jennings sent to drive
Wilson out, who was called Greedy by Damon and by no name at all by Wilson, actually used the
name Sternes. He was no witch, but since his boss got into reaping the
financial rewards of the supernatural, he’d learned all about them and the
various monsters that went bump in the night. Unlike Wilson, who was brilliant at science but
otherwise idiotically naïve, he knew exactly what it meant to have a vampire
chasing you. He’d had it happen before, after all.
    Sternes
was still around. That vampire wasn’t.
    The
moment Wilson
identified Elena to him, Sternes pulled ahead of her and put the truck in the
center of the road, so she wouldn’t have the space she needed to pass him. Wilson sat beside him,
his face impassive but his hand white knuckled while he held onto the bar above
his door that Sternes always like to call the panic bar. At least he wasn’t
trying to get in the way of Sternes doing his job. Jennings said he was a cold one. Not
impervious to emotions, but certainly less flappable than a lot of the people
Sternes’s boss sent him to help, to shake down, and sometimes to kill. His
orders with Wilson
were actually a combination of the first and the third. He was to help Wilson if he had a
vampire in his possession or kill him if he’d lied about it.
    He still
might. Jennings
wouldn’t care about Sternes being tempted by the vamp’s money. He’d have just
laughed. Sternes had worked for him for years, and Jennings knew he’d just double-cross the
creature and hand him over later anyway. But Jennings also didn’t like to have outsiders
complaining about his people to him, and despite being on the payroll, Wilson was definitely an
outsider. If Wilson
looked about to really rat Sternes out to the boss, he’d end him and blame it
on the vampires. Perhaps even on this pretty little thing chasing them right
now.
    If she
was the one Wilson
had in chains before the mouthy bastard in the back, then Sternes really
regretted the fact he’d lost hold of her.
    The truck
was no powerhouse, the gears in