Suzanne suddenly straightened her back, sitting upright in an uncomfortable position on her couch as something felt wrong.
No. Fuck no. Suzanne had her own, entirely mundane shit to deal with today. She had no time for supernatural shenanigans and bullshit. It was the weekend, for Christ's sake. All she had wanted from the day was to watch some Buffy to pray at the altar of Sarah Michelle Gellar and take her dogs for a long walk in the rare Fall sunshine.
That was a whole other issue to deal with. Suzanne now had to cohabitate with a second animal. Damon was paying for all of the supplies Killer required – and fuck, she despised that the name had immediately stuck – but it was still a bitch to train a puppy. And a chore to take it to the vet, though Damon had done her a solid and compelled the vet's office to create all of the documents that would be necessary.
So now she officially had a fucking three-legged puppy who the vet had guessed was about ten weeks old. The dog was a 'she' and a mutt that was probably part German Shepherd and part Labrador. And apparently, the puppy was a permanent fixture in her life for the next ten-to-twelve-years.
Suzanne had made Damon try it out, but no, compelling dogs to not pee on her fucking carpet didn't work.
While she tried to figure out what it was that was giving her major uh-oh feelings, she was distracted by her phone going off. The ring tone "Hollaback Girl" let Suzanne know immediately that it was Caroline who was calling her. Normally she'd be thrilled to chat with the girl instead of deal with some vampire-related drama, but she'd been hearing all week about the high school girl's "Sexy Suds" car wash happening today, so it was incredibly unusual.
"What's up, Caroline?"
"I am trying to take advantage of male hormones to raise money and can't keep wandering off to track you down on the phone. So can you please go to the boarding house and figure out why Damon is yelling at me through my brain? And how is he doing this? Because if he can read my mind or something I am royally screwed –"
Suzanne was zoning out at that point. She hadn't heard from Damon for the last four days, since the night of the Founders' Ball he crashed with Caroline. He'd sent her a text to say he was heading home and going to grab a townie to eat, and that had been that. She hadn't been worried at all – she'd assumed that he was as busy as she was and would come by at some point today or tomorrow.
But if he was trying to use the connection to Caroline, something was wrong. Damon had told her that their connection would be incredibly slight seeing as he had only performed some minor compulsion, so his magical batteries would be draining pretty quickly.
"Sure, sure. Get back to taking advantage of male objectification."
Caroline laughed, seemingly not offended at being interrupted, and said, "Taking down the patriarchy one bikini at a time. Bye, Suze!" before hanging up quickly.
With an incredibly reluctant sigh, Suzanne turned off the television and walked into the kitchen, grabbing her keys. Just as she stepped out of the door of her apartment and into the hallway, she stopped.
She couldn't leave Killer at home, what with the puppy still not getting on board with the you-don't-pee-on-Suzanne's-stuff lecture. God damnit. Alright, then. She was off to rescue her pet vampire with two canine trusty sidekicks, like some knock off Velma.
Suzanne had been over to the Salvatore Boarding House a few times in the last couple of weeks. Only when Damon had been sure that Stefan or the human descendant weren't there. But now Suzanne stared at the unfamiliar parked car in the driveway and wanted to bash Damon's face in.
Whatever stupid situation he was in was probably going to be 100 times more complicated than she had assumed, especially if Zach was in the house and not doing anything to help his vampire-ancestor out. But alas, there was nothing for Suzanne to do other than sneak in and snoop. Hardly a fool-proof plan.
To make things even more complicated, she couldn't just leave her dogs in the car. Suzanne wasn't a complete psychopath – at least not when it came to things she liked. So she would have to sneak into the house with two animals wandering around. Piece of fucking cake.
Damon Salvatore was going to owe her big time.
Slipping inside the house itself was easy. But immediately Suzanne could hear Zachary tapping away at a computer in a side room she assumed was his office. The first place she had to check was Damon's bedroom, to see what the hell was going on. Unfortunately, when she had tip toed half way up the stair case, one of the steps let out a loud 'creak'.
The clear sounds of someone standing up and beginning to walk over to the foyer to investigate began. Suzanne was frozen, not wanting to move and cause any more noise, but also needing to get the fuck out of there or come up with some kind of –
All hell broke loose. And for once, it wasn't Suzanne or Damon's fault.
Maniacal barking and the sound of breaking pottery echoed out from the back yard of the Salvatore house. Immediately Zach began swearing and seemingly ran out to see what was going on. To Suzanne's immense amusement, the sound of a grown man shouting added to the cacophony of sound her apparently gloriously useful dogs were creating.
There was nothing suspicious in Damon's room. Which was in and of itself not a good sign. It meant he was probably somewhere else. 'Somewhere' being the creepy dungeon basement that he had showed her housed the blood bags he drank when he was too lazy to go out people-hunting.
Suzanne was careful as she walked across the ground floor, keeping an eye out for the resident human. But when she peeked through a window she saw the man trying to sweep up an overturned flowerpot while simultaneously shooing her dogs away with exaggerated hand gestures.
When Suzanne finally began walking down the stairs, she heard a low groan. She purposely walked down the stairs at a slow pace, and began talking in a slow drawl.
"If I didn't know any better I'd say a certain moron I'm quite fond of has found himself in –"
However, the mocking smile that covered Suzanne's face immediately dropped when she finally found the right door and peered inside.
Damon looked… sick, was probably the closest word. He looked clammy and pale. The reason was immediately clear – Suzanne recognized an enormous amount of vervain right next to him. Damon had given her a sprig of it a few weeks ago and she had put it in a ring, an anklet, and a necklace - afterword she'd researched what the actual plant itself looked like.
This was – this wasn't funny at all. This was torture.
"Oh my god. Oh fuck, one second, give me – just give me a second."
Suzanne took a minute to wrench the huge door open and dropped to her knees right away, cradling Damon's face in her hands.
"Damon, Damon you've got to talk to me. Are you okay? What can I do?"
His head was lolling around, and when he opened his eyes to squint at her he seemed deliriously confused.
"What're you doin' here, Suze? I thought I asked Blondie-"
"Caroline called me and let me know something was wrong. What –" Suzanne's voice cracked as tears filled her eyes at the sight of her best friend, "- happened to you?"
Damon seemed to be a little bit more lucid and groaned in pain before shifting to sit more upright. After breathing heavily for a minute he answered, "Stefan thought I was drinking out of Caroline, so when he gave her vervain it didn't work. He wound up catching me and injecting me with a fuck ton of it. Did it again last night. Pretty proud of his plot to turn me into a mummy."
Rage flooded through Suzanne. Stefan was a goddamn monster. What he was doing to Damon was torture. Instead of trying to summon any words, Suzanne let out an angry breath and tried to calm herself down. She was of no use to anybody if she wasn't thinking clearly.
After gently carding her fingers through his sweaty hair she pressed a light kiss to his forehead and said, "Don't worry, you're fine now. I'm going to go and grab you some blood, okay?"
Suzanne stood up and immediately went over to the refrigerator on the other end of the cellar, grabbing as many random blood bags as she could carry and running back over. Damon didn't seem to be breathing between gulps as he tore into them one by one. As soon as he was strong enough, Suzanne helped him get to his feet and walk out of the room that was weakening him.
The two of them took a while, but eventually crossed the basement until Suzanne found a chair for him to sit on right next to the open storage of blood bags.
It was strangely fascinating, watching him tear into the bags one after the other. The amount of liquid in his body didn't really seem possible, but Damon just kept finding somewhere to put it.
When he was finally sated and looking much better, the two of them rose and started walking up the stairs.
"Hell of a rescue mission, Suze. You're good at the knight in shining armor gig."
Suzanne would have really liked to say tears didn't come to her eyes, but they did. It was scary to know that he had been in so much pain while she had been going about her daily life. They hadn't spoken for almost a week. When he hadn't answered her texts she'd been genuinely unconcerned, and was expecting him to drop by at some point this weekend. If he hadn't, warning bells would have gone off – but it wouldn't have been soon enough. Something like this couldn't happen again.
"Yeah, well, you know me. Always fighting against those patriarchal gender roles."
Damon laughed and it sounded fairly close to normal. When they stepped out of the basement staircase, their conversation was immediately cut off by a terrified Zach Salvatore.
"No! No! Get out of here. Run! Run!"
Damon was on him in a second, only taking a brief flick of his wrists to snap the man's neck.
Suzanne stared at the body on the floor. She had just watched a man die. That was a corpse she was looking at. But to be honest –
"Good."