The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation: Unspoken by L J Smith, Aubrey Clark Page A

and panting hard. His dark eyes were fixed on Elena, his face distorted with hatred and fury. He bared his teeth at her, his canines long and sharp. If he managed to get loose…
    It must be one of Jack’s synthetic vampires, she realized, because his aura seemed just like a human’s.
    “I can tell now,” Damon said breathlessly, picking up on her curiosity. “There’s a touch of something
wrong
about them. I don’t know what exactly. It’s like a chemical taint.” The vampire bucked under him and Damon hit him on the back of the head, forcing out a grunt of pain. “He was lurking outside our building. He thought he could get to us.”
    Elena’s stomach lurched.
    Picking up on her fear, Damon wrapped a hand around the younger vampire’s throat, squeezing.
See how much stronger I am than he is
, his face seemed to say.
I’ll protect us.
    “Don’t kill him in my car, Damon,” Elena objected, her eyes drawn back to the young vampire’s furious face.
    “I can’t kill him, I don’t know how,” Damon said, but he was grinning. The vampire growled, the sound muffled against the backseat, and Damon smacked him lightly on the back of the head, his other hand still tight around his throat. “I’m going to do some research. Where can we keep him?”
    “Not the apartment, that won’t hold him,” Elena said quickly. “Let me think.”
    “Somewhere no one will overhear,” Damon said. “Somewhere we can keep him under control.”
    Elena started the engine and pulled out on the highway, heading for campus. “My old dorm. It’ll be empty for a few more weeks, and there are storage rooms, like cages, in the basement.” Damon looked doubtful, and she added quickly, “They’re strong. And no one will hear him down there.”
    “Excellent,” Damon said, and Elena felt another flare of excitement from him. “There’s something I want to try.”

M eredith dug her nails into the palms of her hands and tried not to breathe. The vampire—the
young
vampire, he looked like a high school kid—was watching her, leaning against the bars of his cage. Beneath his shaggy black bangs, his dark eyes shone with hate as he looked at the group staring at him. Both of his wrists were chained to the steel bars of one of the dorm’s basement storage cages, and he twisted his wrists against them unceasingly, testing the handcuffs for weakness. Damon must have found a way to weaken him, so the chains were enough to hold him.
    Damon tapped the bars between them, poking at the vampire’s face, and the kid lunged, snapping at him with sharp teeth. Damon pulled his hand back with a laugh. “You see, he’s fast, but no faster than I am,” he explained.Meredith, Alaric, Bonnie, Matt, Jasmine, and Elena had all gathered to see Damon’s latest development. “I wanted to show him to you all, because I want your help in figuring out how Jack made him, and how to kill him.”
    The trapped vampire was growling, softly but steadily, like a savage animal. The sound grated on Meredith’s nerves, and when Alaric’s hand brushed against her arm, she jerked away.
    “Are you okay?” he asked her quietly, and she nodded, not looking at him.
    “I’m fine.” She had to keep her distance from Alaric. She felt sick, thinking about it, but she could still smell the tantalizing, salty scent of his blood.
    “It’s so creepy, the way he’s just staring at us,” Bonnie said. Her small face was wrinkled with disgust, and she clung to Zander’s arm. With a jolt, Meredith realized she was the only one who could hear the vampire’s growling.
    Meredith felt dizzy. She was just like this kid huddled against the bars. What would Elena say if she knew what Meredith was now? Or Bonnie? Would they want to chain her up the same way?
    Damon knew about her, but Damon was practical: He thought Meredith was his best route to finding Jack. Not to mention that he’d given his word, and Meredith knew that once he gave it, Damon never broke his word.