Chapter 35: A Shot For Your Sins
DAMON
"Seriously?" Ric says. "It's three in the afternoon."
I take a fresh bottle of whiskey out of the sideboard cabinet and flip it into the air, catching it by the neck when it comes back down.
"Newsflash, buddy. Your day is no longer dictated by screaming tardy bells and half-literate, mostly-stoned adolescents. Live a little."
I toss him the first bottle and grab another for myself, nabbing two highballs for good measure before I head for the exit.
Ric snorts lightly in disbelief, but I leave the door open behind me because I already know he's coming. Guy talks a good game but at the end of the day, when they're passing out the pageant sash and Volvo keys to Mr. Responsible 2011, Ric and I will have missed the curtain call because we'll be playing beer pong backstage on the solid oak dinette set that was supposed to go to the runner up.
Besides, drunk is the only way to be considering what I'm about to do.
I try to ignore the dark, oily twist deep in my gut that says I don't want to open this can of worms today. Or ever. But Elena was nearly in tears last night because I've been such a dick. Which means I can no longer afford to keep stewing over what I found in the dusty back cabinets of Ric's head, waiting for a stroke of brilliance about what to do with it. I don't want to spend another second thinking about the sick shit that happened to him. Obviously he doesn't either, or he wouldn't have an alter ego to play whipping boy for those demons. And that's the key.
When in doubt, do the last fucking thing you want to do. It's the right answer more often than anyone would like to admit.
Once I hit the trees, I let my strides lengthen out into something that's both faster and more comfortable than what I'm allowed to be when the kiddies are watching. I'm at the clearing before five full minutes have ticked by and I drop the booze and glasses, sprawling out onto the carpet of fallen leaves. It's still early enough in the season that they make the perfect combination of cushion and crackle beneath my weight.
I close my eyes and listen to my friend's footsteps approaching, remembering how Stefan and I used to lie in the forest beyond the hedge maze when we were kids. We would swing our arms and legs, trying to make angel shapes in the leaves, and when we got tired of that we'd throw handfuls and armfuls at each other until we were half-buried in them and laughing, laughing until we couldn't breathe.
Leaves rustle and crumble beside me as Ric settles in, and even though getting indefensibly wasted in the middle of the day is our favorite pastime, there's a part of me that wishes he would have turned me down today.
"Would it have been too much trouble to bring a blanket?" Ric grumbles.
"I'm not trying to get in your pants, and this isn't a picnic," I bitch. "If you don't want to get dirty, you're welcome to go play with the little girls instead."
He grunts, and I smirk when I hear tinfoil tearing and then the pop of the half-cork lid on the bottle of bourbon.
"What's with all this, anyway?" Ric asks.
I tip my head to the side to see him eyeing the glasses suspiciously, as if they're a little too civilized for the setting.
This clearing has become a favorite for both of us, tucked away in the palm of the hills that swell on three sides, making it a perfect shooting range for crossbows, pistols, or whatever other Projectile Delivery System of the week Ric has been working on. Plus it's far enough from the house so we can get rowdy without Elena getting worried, and close enough I can make it back in time if shit hits the fan.
What it doesn't have is furniture, and most of the time, I like it better this way, with nothing for my many enemies to kidnap or burn or vandalize. Just soft leaves, bullet-scarred trees, and a clear view of the sky.
"We need lawn chairs," Ric gripes.
I close my eyes, tuck a hand behind my head, and smile. "Redneck."
"Hippie."
I open one eye, narrowly. "Take that back."
"You're communing with the earth, and we brought re-usable drinkware," Ric points out. "What would you call it?"
"Getting drunk in the forest." I snatch the bottle away from him. "At least that's what we called it before every fucking thing a man did needed a marketing team to 'rebrand' it."
I take a long drink without bothering to sit up, and when a little goes down the wrong pipe, I clear my throat and close my eyes again to hide their watering, holding my breath while I wait for vampire healing to make up for my poor decision making.
When I'm sure I can do it with a measure of dignity, I roll up onto an elbow and say, "Don't call Greenpeace, but I wanted somewhere that had lots of sharp wooden things I could stick you with if you got out of hand. And also preferably somewhere without too many listening ears."
My skin prickles uncomfortably and I have a drink to hide it, trying to ignore the way Ric is looking at me.
He takes the bottle from me, fast enough that my fingers sting. "Pot, kettle, Damon. You're not exactly safe from all those pointy wooden things considering how unstable I've been lately."
The whiskey sloshes as he tips the bottle up and swallows deeply.
I cross my feet at the ankles and relax into my supporting elbow. "This isn't my first Original rodeo. Bet you're playing pincushion before I am."
He doesn't look amused, but I wink anyway and hold out a hand.
Hard glass hits my palm and I clasp it like a handshake.
"We," I tell my best friend, "are going to play a little game."
Instead of drinking, I tip the autumn-colored liquid into waiting glasses, clean and empty like a promise.
"And since I don't like rules, I'll keep it simple. Name something. If you've done it, you've gotta drink."
I lift his glass, and he doesn't take it, his eyes testing mine. He looks wary, and a little nervous, and as tired as he always does lately.
"Ah, come on, don't be a pussy. It's safer than truth or dare," I singsong with a smirk.
He takes the glass, and a breeze riffles through the leaves around us, tickling my bare forearms beyond my rolled up sleeves. I squint up at the sun, gauging how many hours of daylight we have left. The night always comes sooner than I want it to, this time of year.
"History degree," Ric says, and we both drink. "I've always wondered about that." He sends me a sidelong glance.
I tip my glass at him. "Ph.D. It's a little outdated, though. I'll probably redo it the next time Elena gets on the higher education bandwagon."
"That's the thing about history," Ric says, sinking back onto his elbows. "It never goes out of style."
"It does if your degree came before radiocarbon dating."
The corner of Ric's mouth tilts up and he nods in acknowledgement of the point.
I'm not quite ready to take the plunge into Total Suck territory, so I say, "Threesome."
Ric's smile widens, and he takes a long, smug drink.
I laugh and have a sip that covers a lot of complicated decades. "You dog."
"It was always Isobel's idea," Ric says, his expression lighter though his eyes aren't. "She was really into that kind of thing and you know what?" He frowns, darting a glance back toward the house as if Elena could hear him all the way out here. "Let's never talk about this again."
I bob my eyebrows mischievously and just say, "Foursome?" I finish my drink and he hesitates and then sets his glass down. I refill both. "We'll call that a maybe," I taunt.
He chuckles almost soundlessly. "Is this just a game designed to show off all the public sex you can have given about a hundred years and some very loose moral standards?"
I glance at my friend, taking in his wrinkled blue plaid button-down and gritty five o'clock shadow. I can imagine him at my side doing exactly this when the only woods left in the world are held by paper companies or in the prohibitively expensive acreages only owned by vampires and snobs.
We'd probably spend our time bitching about too many kinds of new technology, arguing about the right way to deal with humans, and disagreeing about how to keep Elena safe. I even picture myself digging a few dozen more graves with him, because six feet down is a long way to go with only one shovel.
But witches have been fucking my life around as long as I can remember, and I'm not fool enough to think they'll let Ric stick around that long, or that he'll be sane for most of it if he does.
Witches are the reason he's so fucked up, and the reason he's dead, and the reason we're here, but I'm still not ready to go there.
"Don't pretend your mind is so clean, Ric. We get along for a reason." I nudge him with my shoulder. "Cheerleader in a locker room."
He grins like the teenager we both used to be. "Do you one better. On the team bus."
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. "All the way, not just a furtive third base?"
"All the way." Ric smirks. "And we didn't get caught."
"Then you weren't doing it right," I say, and drink.
Ric narrows his eyes at me.
"God made compulsion for a reason," I remind him cheerfully.
"Damn," he mutters, and drinks to catch up. "Thought I had you on that one." He perks up. "Wait. Starboard deck of the Godspeed, Jamestown Harbor, after the park already closed."
I raise an eyebrow and nod for him to drink. "And you just forgot that one?"
"Was a bit under the weather at the time," he says, and sips with more than a little pride. "Can't believe I've had more exhibitionist sex than a two-century-old hedonist."
"Didn't say that," I say blandly, not bothering to correct his math.
"Prove it," he says incredulously.
"Miss September, in October, on Lady Liberty's crown," I say, and drink.
"No fucking way. And you didn't get caught?"
"Didn't say that, either. But nobody remembers it but me." I wink.
He huffs out a breath that pretends to be disgusted but isn't, and gazes out into the trees.
"Ever been a father?"
Ric doesn't look at me, but he carefully tops off his glass, and then mine. "Almost." He takes a slow sip, as if to the memory of whatever mess rated an "almost" on something as life-changing as fatherhood.
"Yeah, I had a scare back when I was a human." I drink, too. "Didn't turn out to be mine."
It was when I was young enough to still be confused about what exactly put a woman in an indelicate condition, young enough that I didn't realize what I was missing yet. My father didn't believe my wavering denials, and if the girl hadn't eventually broken down to her parents with the truth, I would have been married to her before the Confederacy recruiters or Katherine ever swept through Mystic Falls.
Ric winces. "You've really had some luck with girls stepping out on you."
I take an extra sip, letting the smooth bourbon wash away the bitter truth of his statement. "Well, it takes some time to build up skills like mine." I smirk. "Not a problem I have these days."
Ric laughs and I abruptly decide it's time to stop being a coward.
"Ever jerked it in the same room as another guy?" I take a conspicuous drink.
Ric gives me an odd look, but I keep my shoulders relaxed and my eyes on the trees. He may feel like the only other real adult in my life, but he's still young and it's not the kind of thing people just talk about, at least not in this country.
"Ah, don't start lying this early in the game, Ric, we haven't even gotten to the '70s yet," I say offhandedly.
Ric raises his glass, avoiding my eyes as he chuckles unevenly. "God, I haven't thought about that in years." He takes a gulp of whiskey, wincing like it burns.
I refill our glasses again, the bottle of bourbon starting to seem too light in my hand. My throat feels hard and brittle and my abs jerk as I pull myself to a sitting position, draping my arms over my bent knees and letting my glass dangle carelessly from my fingers as if it holds nothing more than four fingers of top-shelf booze.
"Ever had a father figure tell you you're an abomination?" This time I take a mouthful big enough that I wince, but I swallow it all down, letting it scorch the insides of my nostrils and sting in the corners of my eyes.
When Ric hesitates, I don't.
"Uncles count," I tell him ruthlessly.
This time, his glass rises and he swallows painfully before he even puts it to his lips. The drink he takes is too small to numb the impact of my words and I know it.
The leaves left on the trees around us rattle in the dying gust of the evening breeze and Ric's hair brushes his forehead, but he doesn't move to push it away.
I already knew his dad was a lineman working on high-voltage power lines, that he was away on jobs for months at a time. I also knew his dad's brother lived two blocks down and visited a lot. But in the stories Ric told me, his uncle was just a guy who came over when he was younger and threw a ball around with him, coached his peewee football league one year. I assumed his uncle moved away by the time Ric hit high school, because that's when the stories stopped.
But that's not what I found in his head the night I snuck into his memories and slid right in between the lines of what you say out loud. And what you don't.
"Ever had an uncle who brought over a skin flick on VHS and tried to act it out with you?"
Ric flinches, hard.
My fingers squeeze my glass so tightly that the lines in the crystal leave bruises all the way to the bone. The leaves rustle and scrape above us, and one swings free and drops, faster than I would have expected, to the ground between us.
My voice is low and rough when I speak again. "I can't drink with you on that one, brother, but I will absolutely drink to you beating the fuck out of that guy with a cricket bat."
The whiskey tastes weak on my tongue now, not dark enough for the occasion. I'm not even sure if blood would be thick enough. Not for this.
Ric stares at the liquor in his glass, and it's trembling slightly, as if from the impact of heavy footsteps, too far away to hear.
"How do you know about that?" he asks hoarsely.
"Your dad was gone for most of that year," I tell him instead. "And your mom got a job so your uncle was supposed to keep an eye out, drop in now and again just to check on you because she didn't get off work until late. He was the one who walked in on you and your friend looking at your first set of stolen girly magazines. When he saw what was going on, he just turned around and walked right back out, but when he came back a month later he had a whole different question."
Ric finally drinks, but his hand is shaky and a little whiskey escapes, the drip meandering through his beard stubble like a tear before he shoves it away with the back of his hand.
"He didn't believe you when you said no, and after you worked him over with that bat, he lay bleeding on your bedroom floor and he told you that you were no better than him," I remind Ric, refusing to blink though my eyes burn for relief. "That you had dirty little secrets, too."
My friend's chest rises and falls with a deep breath and he stares at the ground like it's all new to him and he can't quite understand the layers of leaves and soil and broken sticks.
Ric says, slowly, "Nothing ever felt as good as the first time I hit him with that bat."
I reach over and take his glass from him, and shoot the rest of the shot to mark something that never should have happened.
"Except for the guy you clocked at school the next Tuesday for calling your friend a spick," I remind him, twisting my lips into a reluctant smile because I understand all too well wanting to have something to fight, even when the important things can't be reached with your fists.
Ric picks up the bottle and empties it into our glasses. "I picked a lot of fights when I was younger."
"I might have picked one or two myself," I say, and sip. "When I was younger, that is."
Ric snickers sharply and I dig the heel of my boot idly into the soft dirt, making a little hollow beneath the leaves.
"At least you picked them with the right people," I remind him. All too often, I've hit whatever was nearby. But Ric tried to fight only the bad guys, even after he decided he was one of them.
The edges of my thoughts are starting to slip and blur heavily. I want, a little, to forget why we're here and why we have to talk about shit we both would rather bury. I want, a lot, to go back in time and stuff my knuckles through his uncle's dental work.
I grab the empty bottle and flip it up in the air, catching it.
My friend sits next to me, elbows propped on his upraised knees and his wrist clasped in the opposite fist. I can feel his humiliation as easily as if I stepped inside his mind and I'm flatly furious he thinks he has anything to apologize for.
I flip the bottle up and this time when it comes back down, I slam my fist into it with brutal frustration. My ring cracks the brittle glass and the force of my punch shatters it. Ric doesn't even flinch at the flying pieces, just closes his eyes as it rains down all around us.
"You can't stop seeing yourself in every person you attack," I tell him, not bothering to shake out my bloody knuckles as the cuts start to heal. "Shit, Ric, one of the people you offed in your little serial killer spree was yourself." I grab my glass from the ground between us and toss back a quick, bracing drink. "Takes vigilante to a whole different level."
Ric cracks open the new bottle as if he's forgotten the whiskey already in his glass, leaning back to stuff the tin foil seal in his pocket as he stares out at the trees.
"How many nights of walking around in my head did that take you?" he asks, his flat tone not doing much to hide the discomfort writhing beneath it.
"One."
I finish my glass and hold it out to him for a refill even though my limbs are starting to prickle with that numbing kind of pleasure that tells me I've had enough. There's a twitchy energy rising in my gut and I'm glad we didn't try and have this conversation at the boarding house. I might need to run a little wild before I'll be safe to go home tonight.
I knew there was a reason Ric and I got along so well, because there aren't too many people on earth who care for the unedited version of me, but I guess I wasn't ready to know exactly how much we had in common. Or how pissed I would be that the similarity is what has sliced his personality straight down the center, cutting right on the dotted line between Sane and Shit We Don't Discuss.
We like to fight. And the people we most want to fight look a lot like ourselves.
"Really?" he says, looking like he's still chewing on that one. "Just one night?"
"I know the right buttons to push." I kick my foot almost viciously into the leaves.
He shoots me a sidelong look. "So is that the stick that's been up your ass lately?"
"Maybe you haven't noticed, but I'm moody," I snap. "Has nothing to do with you."
What the hell does he think, that I'm going to go off crying into my beribboned pillow because I found out he had a rough time as a kid? Childhood sucks. Parents suck more. I'm over it, and if he had any sense, he'd be over it too.
After all the people I've known in my life, the only parents I can think of who did a decent job were Mommy and Daddy Gilbert, and they turned out to be hiding a little mad scientist/vampire hunter streak. But Jesus, at least they didn't take it out on their kids.
I drink a silent toast to the relief of that.
"Okay," Ric says, clearing his throat. "So you know…all that."
I snort when I see the ruddy hue creeping up his throat. "I've got to admit, I'm a little disappointed in the deep, dark secret he was holding over your head. Man, you better believe if I could have gotten dirty magazines in the 1860s I wouldn't have come out of my room until the Civil War was over and I wouldn't have given a shit who wanted to join in on my little viewing party."
He looks down and huffs out a half-hearted laugh. "Duly noted," he says. "So what am I going to do about all this shit?"
"Not try and stake me three times a week, for starters," I say acerbically, flopping back onto the ground. "Ow," I hiss, picking a shard of glass out of my elbow and glaring at the dirt before I lean back again.
"That's your karma for littering," Ric says, looking amused.
I roll my eyes at him. "That's your first step. If you're going to be a reformed psychopath, Judgy Jimbo is not the persona you want to go with. That's the crap that's gotten you to where you are today."
Ric picks up his highball and doesn't comment.
"So," I tell him, swinging my drink a little too enthusiastically because really, it's about time somebody asked me what I thought and actually freaking listened when I answered. "When you see something dark and nasty about being a vampire and it sticks in your craw, you're going to man up and deal. You're not going to play all holier than thou, look at me I'm a good and pure and virtuous saint."
I level a look at him, and wait until his eyes move reluctantly away from the trees and toward me.
"You've done some shit, Ric. We all have. That's not what eats you. It's pretending like you're too good for it, and you would never stoop to that level yourself. You want to kill vampires? Fine. You want to kill people that help vampires? Fine. Own it, live it, love it," I tell him, pointing at him with each word for emphasis, ignoring when a little whiskey sloshes out of my glass and onto my hand.
The more I think about it, the more indignant I am. What kind of world wouldn't like my buddy Ric anyway?
"Be as bad as you want," I say with a dismissive flick of my wrist. "But know this: the person you are now, the people you've helped since then? They are a hundred times more important than getting too excited over Miss September with your Little League buddy. And they're a thousand times more important than your uncle the pervert and the implant teeth he had to get after you showed him that a scrawny 12-year-old with a temper wasn't as much of a pushover as he thought."
Ric looks pale, but he smiles slightly at that. "I was a little violent, even back then."
"Fucking A," I say with an emphatic nod and a silent cheers.
This time, Ric drinks the toast with me.
When he lowers his hand again, he taps the thick glass bottom thoughtfully against his opposite forearm, both arms folded over his knees. "And here I am in the Virginia woods, getting life coached by a drunken vampire who once slept with my wife." He snorts. "I really do have problems."
"Pfft," I make a dismissive sound and roll down onto my back, ignoring the crunch of broken glass and the sting as a piece cuts through my shirt. "I'm smarter drunk than most people are when they're sober."
He snorts. "Says the guy lying in broken glass."
"Fuck it," I say, the words rolling together a little too quickly. "I'll heal."
We drink for a while in a companionable silence that never feels heavy, which is another reason it's going to be a shitty day in the neighborhood when Qetsiyah reels Ric back over to her side of the veil. Guy knows how to shut his mouth when he doesn't have anything to say, and I appreciate that.
When I need a refill, I nudge my glass over and listen to the easy splash of a generous pour. I get up and brush some broken shards away before I tuck a hand behind my head and settle more firmly into the leaves.
It's nice to have nowhere to be. Elena and Jeremy are already implanted in the Augustine Society as vampire-finding spies and even though the idea gave me more than a little indigestion at first, I have to admit I'm proud. Used to be that neither of them could tell a lie to save their lives but they've gotten better. And those sweet Gilbert eyes are a potent weapon for winning the trust of our enemies.
We'll have enough information to take down the whole Society before they get anywhere close to the Virginia vampire population.
"Thanks for…doing what you did," Ric says after a while. "I know it couldn't have been easy for you."
I almost laugh him off, but something in the pattern of the leaves above me makes me pause, my drink halfway to my mouth. "You know what? It took some big goddamn balls to ask me to do that."
Ric laughs, but I'm not done. I don't know if it's the booze or the company but suddenly I can't stop seeing parallels between my life and his.
"You didn't get what was so wrong with the Augustines making vampires feed from each other," I remind him. "Because nobody ever talks about that kind of stuff if they can avoid it."
I roll up onto an elbow, fixing him with a look.
"When another vampire takes blood from you, they take everything else along with it. Every thought you were embarrassed to find yourself having, every lie you've ever told yourself about who you are and what you want and what you've done. They don't see the person you think you are." I swallow. "They see what you really are."
I can see the hints of fear and pity in Ric's expression, the shame and embarrassment he's been trying to conceal, but in spite of all that he keeps his eyes steady on mine, and he doesn't speak.
"Not a vampire in a hundred would volunteer for a bloodshare," I tell him. "Any more than they'd invite me inside their head the way you did. No matter what was at stake." I pop my eyebrows, looking away as I mutter, "God knows I wouldn't."
Not for anyone but Elena would I have done it again. And I still can't make any sense of the pure pleasure bloodsharing is with her. It's like what we do together belongs in a whole separate universe from the Augustines.
"Wasn't it different in those cells, though?" Ric asks, not unkindly. "Since you all had to do it?"
I make a hard sound. "No."
I dig a bright piece of glass up from beneath the cushion of leaves and flick it into the forest. I hear it ricochet off the trunk of a tree fifty yards away, taking a decent-sized chunk of bark with it.
"There was one girl," I say, my voice dripping with cynicism, "that took it differently than the rest of us. She didn't get off on the buzz, but she drank in the knowledge. She thought the blood shares were like a confessional: an opportunity to come clean and accept each other," I mock in a high falsetto, rolling my eyes. "She was just like Elena, hadn't learned yet the fuck all that idealism gets you."
I take a bitter drink of whiskey.
"But she figured it out in the end," I mutter.
My jailbreak ruined a lot of things. She was one of them.
"That doesn't sound so awful," Ric argues. "If you'd all seen the best and worst in each other, what's left but learning to live with it?"
"They weren't using the blood shares to get us to hold hands and sing Christmas carols, Ric," I say tersely. "They were using them to remind us why we were condemned, each and every one of us. Why we didn't deserve to live. It was all part of the greater re-education programming. And with a whole jail chock full of old vampires?" I flare my eyes at him. "You better believe there was plenty of dirty laundry to go around when they decided to play the Top Ten Nastiest Sins of the Week."
I swirl the amber liquid in my glass, glaring sourly down at it.
"We were starving to death on vampire blood, and the best of us were half-mad from torture and the constant battering of the Augustine's amateur attempts at brainwashing. The worst of us…" I trail off, the memory of those days like a trace of grit on my tongue that I can't quite rub off. "There's a whole world of suffering past suicidal, my friend. And when they lock you away from the sharp and pointy, you find new corners of it twenty-four more times every day."
Ric makes a movement in my peripheral vision that looks like a flinch.
"After years of that, how did you manage to not give in? To not turn against vampires? Against yourself?" he asks me, his voice raw. I can hear his disappointment at himself for not being able to do the same. But at the same time, there's a hint of interest from the part of him that understands a little too well why the Augustines were willing to go to such great lengths to wipe out our species.
"It's not drinking blood that makes us evil," I say shortly. "All vampires were humans first, and not necessarily good ones." I glare out at the trees. "It wasn't vampires who kept us in those cells, cutting pieces off us every day and watching them grow back again. It was humans."
"So what? Does that mean we're all doomed, human, vampire or otherwise?" Ric asks dryly.
I shrug one shoulder. "Shit, I don't know. Maybe."
He looks over, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth that I don't fully understand. "Or maybe not," he says quietly, to me.