Caroline woke up in the dark. Even with her enhanced senses she could not pierce through the darkness. She still felt weak and her whole body hurt. The last thing she remembered was meeting the werewolf pack outside of the club. Suddenly every memory of last night and realization came crashing down at her. She had watched Klaus kill werewolves and had not intervened. Had she? Her head was spinning from the different possibilities. She tried to set her thoughts straight. If she really had been with Klaus for the past six months had she turned into a monster like him? He had first hinted that she drank from the vein, than at rather dirty sex and now this. She didn't understand herself anymore. She sighed.
"Good, you are awake." A male voice said somewhere in the room. Caroline jumped up and tried to figure out where the voice had come from. She could not see but her other senses were still heightened. Her body was under pressure and had automatically moved into a defensive position.
"Don't worry. I wouldn't hurt you even if I could reach you. I am not interested in killing someone from my own kind." The man said. He had a pretty heavy native accent.
"Who are you?" Caroline asked cautiously in his native language. From what she could hear the other person was on the opposite side of the room which seemed judging from the resonance to be rather spacious and empty.
"I am Pedro."
"Where are we?"
"I don't know."
"Why are you here?"
"I pissed of the wrong pack. I got into a fight with one of the pubs in a bar. I accidently killed him not knowing that the rest of the bar was filled with his brothers, cousins and the rest of the gang. They beat me up and then vervained me quicker than I could react. I woke up here."
"How long have you been here?"
"I don't know. It is always dark here. I can't count the days. A while I suppose."
Caroline stopped to think for a moment. If he had been in here a while without anybody entering he must be pretty starved by now. She did not want to take the risk of him attacking here although it would not give him much more strength.
"Is there a way out of this place?" She asked in hope of a practical answer.
He actually laughed at her question. It was a throaty raspy laugh. It reminded her of the way Damon had sounded when Stefan had put him away after killing Coach Tanner. Pedro must have been here a very long time. "There is no way out, princess. The walls are painted with paint mixed with vervain. Try not to get too close to them. From time to time the door is opened to check if I am already deceased to a mummy. But of course they only open it during the day so there is no chance of escape." He concluded resigned.
Caroline hastily checked if she still had her daylightring on. It was still wrapped around her finger. She sighed in relief. At least that was an advantage she had that they did not know about. Although he had warned her she tried to find the wall. As soon as it collided with her fingers she jumped back from the stinging pain of the vervain. She took of her shoes and began exploring the walls with her shoe touching the wall. Finally her shoe collided with something metallic. She assumed that she had found the door. She touched the door only with her pinky finger and jerked it back immediately. The door was painted with vervain paint as well.
She finished her round passing Pedro on the way who lay on the floor without moving. She assumed he did not want to spend more energy than he already had. She did not stay near him afraid that he might do something to her in his last moving moments.
Reaching the wall where she had started she sat down again far away from the wall.
"I am Caroline, by the way." She tried to start the conversation again. She heard him stir at his side of the room.
"Caroline, as in Klaus' girlfriend Caroline?" He asked surprised. She snorted. "I am not his girlfriend and I don't know why everybody believes that!"
"Whether you are his girlfriend or not if this pack believes you are, you are in deep shit, princess." He actually laughed his throaty laugh again.
"What is that supposed to mean? I didn't do anything. What happened?" Caroline asked annoyed and confused at the same time.
"Well, this is a small community of supernatural beings. We may not like each other very much but we hear what is going on around us. A few weeks ago Klaus arrived at this werewolf pack when a part of the warriors were out. Nobody knows what he wanted but when he didn't get it he started killing people until there were only few left to tell the story. Then he left the pack without saying another word. They say that he was accompanied by a pretty blonde vampire who did not participate but still watched him go crazy on the pack. At the same time there were rumors of Klaus being with a vampire girl named Caroline living in the city. We all just put two and two together."
Caroline gasped. She could not believe this, what the hell had Klaus done? And why did everybody think that she was involved in it. She hated not knowing what was going on. She did not know how much time had passed since she had left Klaus in the club but he must have noticed that she didn't come back. She would actually be pretty happy to see him right now. If she ever got out of this mess she would definitely question him about what had happened between them. She could not deny anymore that something had happened since everybody, well not everybody, but many people remembered her together with Klaus. Unfortunately only the people that hated his guts remembered them. Great!
Suddenly she heard a noise outside the door. Somebody was turning a key in the door.
"Stay away from the door. There is direct sun on this door and I would not want you to already exhaust yourself before I have even begun to enjoy this. I am also holding a gun with wooden bullets, so don't try me." An unfamiliar voice said.
The door opened slowly and sunlight flowed into the room. Pedro began to crouch as far away from the rays as possible. Caroline pretended to be fleeing from the sunlight as well. There was no need to let her opponent know her secret. When she looked up she saw a man that was equally tall as the ones from last night. He looked at her with a sign of absolute disgust on his face.
"You must be Caroline. Well, catching you was easier than we thought. Who thought that you would be as careless as going out on the street by yourself?" He said to her.
"Who are you?" asked Caroline.
"You know that. We have met before. I tried to be polite to Klaus telling him to back of my territory but he only laughed in my face. You were standing next to him smiling."
"That wasn't me! I've been trying to tell everybody that I am not his girlfriend and have never been. Please let me go, I have nothing to do with Klaus and you." She begged him.
"Liar!" he shouted at her. "I saw you. I smelled you. I don't forget a smell that easily."
"I swear," she began again but he triggered his gun and shot a bullet through her shoulder. She started screaming and cursing. This was so unfair. She hadn't done anything. Yet still she was the one getting shot. She felt the bullet working its way out of her body and that hurt nearly as much as when it came into her body. She looked at the man who had still pointed his gun at her. His face was full of satisfaction and he obviously enjoyed watching her in pain. At the sight of this something snapped in her. She threw herself at him and knocked the gun out of his hands. He was surprised at her move since he hadn't expected her to be able to move in the sunlight. She knew she had to use this moment to her advantage. Without thinking she pushed her hands inside his chest and closed a fist around his beating heart. He stopped moving underneath her and just starred at her. She was sitting on top of him and under different circumstances the position might have looked compromising but right now he was plainly scared.
Caroline put more pressure on the hand around his heart. "Who are you and what do you want from me?"
"My name is Alexandre. I am the leader of this pack. I need you as bait to get revenge for Klaus." He was clearly scared for his own life and kept starring at his chest were Caroline's hand was buried.
"Why Klaus? What did he want from you that made him so furious?"
"I don't know," he said. He coughed when she put even more pressure on his heart. "Wait, wait! He wanted to know the location of someone we are protecting. But nobody who was here could tell him because they did not know."
"Who?" she asked impatiently. "Who is he looking for?"
"His name is Shane. I don't know what Klaus wants from him. I swear!"
"Shane? Professor Shane?"
"I really don't know more. We got the order to protect him if he ever passes through our lands. He is gone now. He already left months ago. I don't know more." He was still frightened and kept starring at her hand in his chest.
Caroline hesitated for a moment. She had all the information he could give her. She could easily kill him and something inside of her screamed for her to do it but she fought the thought. With her free hand she slammed his head on the floor making him immediately lose consciousness. She pulled her hand out of his chest. She was confused that nobody seemed to have heard their small conversation. For the first time she looked up to see if somebody was watching her but nobody was around. There were no guards and nobody watching the building she had been kept. Clearly they did not know that some vampires could walk in the sun. She smiled to herself about her advantage. The whole process of talking to Aexandre took her less than two minutes and now she had to escape from here. Unfortunately she had no idea where she was. She pulled Alexandre's unconscious body into the room. Suddenly she remembered Pedro the other vampire. If she left Alexandre in there he would probably attack him as soon as she closed the door. She contemplated with herself for a few seconds. But her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a voice calling his name. She had already lost too much time thinking about this. Deciding that her freedom was more important and secretly hoping that Pedro was really not able to move anymore she left the huge werewolf in the room and hurried outside. She closed the heavy iron door that was fortunately not painted with vervain paint from the outside and took a deep breath.
Scanning her surroundings she realized she was in a warehouse complex. All around her were big windowless buildings but she couldn't see anybody around neither supernatural nor ordinary human. She decided to make her way along the building trying to find the exit or a sign that told her where she was. Someone called Alexandre again and this time the voice was much closer. Caroline decided not to linger and went to find an exit. After a few minutes of searching she finally found a sign that pointed to the exit. She followed the signs and started hearing more voices. Suddenly she realized how suspicious she looked with Alexandre's blood all over her right hand and on her clothes and a bullet hole in her upper right sleeve. Since it was a Saturday there were very few people working but there were still some. She looked around the next corner and saw a gate with barbed wire fence on top. In front of it stood three guards that were talking to each other. From this distance she could not tell if they were werewolves or regular humans. Three humans would not have been a problem but dealing with three werewolves was not what she wanted right now. She was wounded and hadn't fed since Wednesday. But she was lucky since two of the guards started walking away from the gate in opposite directions. She seized the opportunity and ran towards the last guard. He had his backs to her and did not see her coming. When she got closer she could smell that he was no werewolf. She knocked him over and broke out through the gate.
She ran for another few minutes away from the place until she was sure that nobody was following her. She seemed to be in an industrial area of the city that she had never seen before. She stopped and started thinking about how she would get back to her place from here.
"And here I thought I might come to your rescue but it seems that you don't need rescuing after all." A familiar voice said behind her. She turned around and saw him smirking at her looking satisfied about something as always. Without thinking she launched herself at him. He was surprised that for a small moment she caught him off balance and they landed on the floor with her on top. He immediately turned them around and pinned her hands to the ground.
"What was that about, love? Told you I was coming to rescue you. It just took me a while to find this place."
"You ass! I was brought here in the first place because of you! What the hell did you do and why are you looking for Professor Shane?"
"Oh, so did you figure that out by yourself or are you suddenly remembering?" He asked her in a curious tone.
"I had to dig my hands into someone's chest to figure that out. I nearly crushed a heart." She screamed agonized in his face.
"Well, love, that sounds terribly sexy. I am very sorry I was not there to witness it. Maybe we can repeat the experience?" He smirked.
She could not believe what she was hearing. He did not even remotely answer her questions and did not look like he was about to. She struggled underneath him and tried to get her hands free. She really wanted to slap the shit out of him.
"Answer my questions!" She ordered him.
"Well, aren't we feisty today? I like it. That it reminds me of good times we had together." Suddenly he leaned into her and kissed her.