Chapter 14

Elijah was aware of the amount he was taking. Although he would have taken more if he had not cared about Caroline, he forced himself to stop and let his tongue clean her skin. Before he lifted his head from her arm, he made sure the fangs had retracted and his face had cleared of the dark veins. He didn't want to look ugly and beastly. Not in front of her.

Caroline opened her eyes as he let go of her arm. She saw that his face looked normal, except for some blood on his lips and he was licking that off. She looked at her arm and saw the two puncture marks, which were not bleeding. She also saw the red marks where he had strongly gripped her arm. Would she have bruises?

"Thank you, Caroline. That really helped me to heal and regain my strength," Elijah told her. "You let me do it without my trying to compel you. You're a brave woman."

"You said you needed it."

"Do you feel at all light-headed? Perhaps you should sit down for a few minutes," the Original said.

"I'm alright. Really. I've given blood before and it never bothered me." She glanced at Damon, wondering if he was going to demand some of her blood, too. She hoped not.

Damon did want some fresh blood, but he resisted asking her for it, suspecting Elijah had taken all she could safely give. He had lost very little blood to the outside of his body, but he had quite a bit of pain. Caroline's blood would have eased that. Instead, he turned to his brother.

"Let me have a little," he muttered.

Stefan didn't argue about the demand, but instead pulled up his jacket sleeve and offered his wrist. Damon didn't face Caroline as he let his face change and the fangs come down. He held onto the arm and drove the fangs into the small radial artery at the wrist. Stefan's blood was cool and tasted different from what Caroline's would have tasted like, but it offered more strength and healing power, and Damon took less. Although his pain didn't go away entirely, it was much less sharp.

They heard someone open the front door, and it turned out to be two men from the clean-up crew. Elijah briefly told them what had happened and they said they would take care of it. They had no clue why the man upstairs had shot Elijah.

"Let us get out of here," Elijah said to his group. They gathered their coats and headed out to the big pickup truck. Only light snow was falling now from the clouds that seemed to be moving along fairly quickly. The drive to the Salvatore house took a couple of minutes and the four of them went back inside. The house had cooled down somewhat, but it was not cold. They ended up in the kitchen where they made fresh cups of coffee. This time Caroline had a cup of tea.

While the coffee was perking, Damon went to his room and changed clothes. The incident at the mansion had been troubling, but it was only one more things to happen in this town fraught with danger. He was so used to danger that he became bored when nothing was happening. He had spent one calm summer with his love Elena Gilbert, but she was "dead" in her coffin. He had had no real rest and relaxation since then, but even still, he thought a lot about that time and it made him feel good. Aside from getting shot, he liked the excitement of having Elijah visiting along with his problems. At least they were different from the business with the Heretics.

"I thought I would be returning to New Orleans today, but perhaps I should stay to figure out what to do about the occurrences," Elijah said, relaxing in his chair.

"Or are you just getting a break for your family's problems?" Damon asked.

"That, too."

Caroline was pleased to hear that he was staying, but… "I suppose I should be getting home myself. In the light of day, it doesn't seem so scary."

"You need to get your car back," Elijah reminded her. He turned to Damon and asked where the car would be after it was towed from the roadside.

"There's only one towing company in Mystic Falls and another one closer to the highway," Damon answered and he pulled out his phone. In a couple of minutes he found out where the car was. "I can drive you over there," he told her.

"Doesn't the man who owns that truck need it back?"

"His wife has a car."

"Alright. I'll get my things from my room," the woman said and she left the kitchen and headed for the back stairway.

"I'll come with you," Elijah said to Damon. "I would appreciate it if you could take me to a car rental place. I cannot keep asking you to drive me back and forth."

Damon nodded. Just then the brightness of sunlight came in the kitchen window. He went to the door, opened it and looked out. "Hey, the clouds are breaking up."

Stefan dragged out his phone and checked the weather report. "We're on the backside of that line of storms," he reported. "The weather will clear now. In fact, it looks like warm air will reach us from the south this evening."

"How about Charlottesville?" Elijah asked.

"It looks good. Are you planning to fly out of there?"

"I would prefer to, assuming they will have cleared the runways of snow," Elijah said, nodding.

While they sat there, the electricity came back on and the refrigerator hummed again. It turned out that no one left the house for some time. They chatted and ate lunch put together from the small amount of food that had thawed in the freezer and other stuff that needed to be cooked and eaten. Damon mentioned that he would look for a maid to come and do the cleaning and the laundry. He himself did not intend to clean the bedrooms left messy by the Heretics, not to mention Elijah and Caroline.

By the time all except Stefan climbed into the truck, the sun was shining brightly and trees were dripping melted snow. Damon took Caroline to where her car was.

"If I am still here later, may I call you and take you out to dinner?" Elijah asked her.

Caroline was pleased that he wanted to see her again, even though she knew he would soon be leaving for New Orleans. She agreed to dinner and gave him her phone number and address. "I'll get my phone charged," she promised.

So, they took her to reclaim her vehicle. Damon then drove to a place where Elijah could rent a car. He waited to be sure the Original got a vehicle, which he did, and then he drove to the supermarket to buy groceries and other items that he and Stefan needed.

Elijah spent time at the mansion taking a closer look at the furniture that had been damaged and taking better photographs. The body was gone and the new mess had been cleaned up. He had arranged for someone to be at the house as a temporary caretaker until another couple could be found. He didn't mention that there was the danger of being killed by the Heretics, who were still in several houses in Mystic Falls. Aside from Dodge and Martin, he had not run into anyone else that was a Heretic, as far as he could tell. There was no report that the dead man had been part of that group, but when Elijah talked to the cleaning company again, he found out that the man's father had died, probably killed, directly or indirectly, by one of the Mikaelsons in New Orleans. He was not surprised by this news. A person was killed and the family sometimes sought revenge.

He went into the room he considered his own and went around the bed to look at one of the smaller paintings that was still on the wall. It was a scene from Norway, a rugged coastal area where his mother had claimed to have fallen in love with Mikael, the Viking raider. While Elijah did not care that both Mikael and Esther were now dead, he did like the painting of his family's original homeland. Of course, only Freya and Finn had been born there before Mikael had moved his family to the distant continent that was now called North America.

After studying the picture for a minute, he turned to move toward the French doors to the small balcony. His left foot came down on something under the bedside rug, something that had dropped down the tiniest bit under his weight. He didn't move. Whatever it was, it had not been there before and it did not belong there now. His alarm was due to the fact that it might be one of those explosive devices that went off when his weight was removed from the armed bomb. It was not big or thick, and he had not noticed a lump in the carpet, for he had been looking at the picture. Obviously, it was not one that exploded when weight was put on it, which was a relief. Of course, there was the possibility that one of the cleaners had left something under the carpet and it was not a bomb at all. Maybe.

He didn't think it had been there when he and Caroline had been in the room before, when he had showered and changed clothes, but maybe he was wrong. If it had been there, she might have stepped on it when she was walking around. He wasn't sure she had moved near that spot to look at the picture. It made him feel momentarily nauseated to think she might have been blown up.

So, did that mean the dead shooter had placed it there after the other cleaning crewmen had left and before he had shot him, Elijah? Most likely. If not, then another crewman had put it there. Somehow that did not seem likely. And had the fellow known it was Elijah's room or had he placed the bomb for anyone to step on? If it was a bomb. Maybe his imagination was thinking the worst. Under stress, he felt confusion.

The expensive area rug was six feet long and four feet wide and rested on the hardwood floor. He bent down and carefully grasped the edge and slowly lifted it. He finally saw a flat circle of plastic material. He was more convinced that it was a bomb. The slight lump under his shoe had to be the trigger. What should he do? He could move fast enough to distance himself from the worst of the devastation, but he really didn't want to cause serious damage to the room, much less the house. Or himself.

Another choice was to try to put something heavy on the device besides his own weight. Such a move was tricky and the bedside stand which might have worked, was just out of reach anyway. Who should he call, Damon or the sheriff? He decided to call the lawman, who he was able to reach directly on his phone. Matt Donovan's office did not have a bomb squad, but he knew a couple of retired soldiers who had experience in that area. Elijah told him he wasn't going anywhere and that he would be just standing around waiting for them to come to the house.

While he waited, he phoned his brother and told him the situation. For once, Klaus was speechless.

"If I am destined to be blown to bits, I thought I should let you know this might be the time," Elijah said with the barest hint of humor.

"Just get out of there, brother! I don't care if the damned house gets damaged!"

A/N Thanks to you guys who are reading this story. I haven't gotten any reviews lately, but you all are still reading. I appreciate that.