A/N: Sorry for the long wait after that cliffhanger, guys, but this chapter has been an emotional rollercoaster to write! I even rewrote it a couple of times, because I felt quite insecure about it ugh... So I'd very much like to know your thoughts and likes (or dislikes, but let's not go there quite yet) about it in a review if you feel like it!

Now hold onto your seats and enjoy the ride! ;)

Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries or any of its characters. This is a work of fiction written for entertainment purposes, but the original characters and original storylines.

DAMON'S POV

I sped toward my car, opened the passenger door and threw myself inside, having just enough time to close the door behind me before it got rip off by a parked car.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" I barked. "And with my car!"

"Stop complaining. I'm only allowing you to remain in it because you helped me trick Maya into dating me," Katherine replied offhandedly.

"Oh, so this is your way of thanking me?"

"The only useful one in your let's-be-heroes team was the bitchy witch, but since her magic has no effect on our little kidnapped friend, she's useless now too. So I decided to take things in my own hands. But if you want to go back to them, by all means..." she trailed off to give me a taunting glance, "be my guest. You're lucky already that I didn't hurl you back on the sidewalk. You should be grateful."

I flattened a hand over my chest and put on a sarcastic smile. "Oh but I am, Miss Katherine! I'm so honored you allow me to be in your presence."

"I'm glad we're on the same page. Now, shut up."

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed a number. I rolled my eyes at her self-importance.

"Hi Kat," a female voice greeted on the other side of the phone.

"Are you still at the same place you were last time we spoke?"

"Yes. Why?" There was something vaguely familiar about the stranger's tone, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Meet me at our usual spot."

"What? Now? But I-"

"Be there in an hour," Katherine clipped before hanging up.

"A friend of yours?" I asked with irony.

"Something like that."

Narrowing my eyes at her, I tried to figure out what kind of diabolical plan she was developing in her crazy little head, until something dawned on me.

"You know what happened to Maya, don't you?"

She sighed and put a strand of curly hair back in place, her eyes never leaving the road.

"I'm not in the mood to chit chat, Damon. So I'd advise you to adjust your attitude according to that fact if you want to stay in one piece and inside the car."

I clenched my jaw to prevent my pride to give her a piece of my mind. If there was a chance she could lead me to Maya, I wasn't going to blow it up.
I retrieved my phone from my inside pocket and texted Stefan the details, just in case this was another one of Katherine's evil plans to ambush both me and Maya. And what I noticed while eyeing her discreetly during the entire ride did nothing to appease my suspicions. When she wasn't nibbling at the corner of her bottom lip, she was squeezing the steering wheel unconsciously. Katherine Pierce didn't do nervous, unless Klaus was around. Since he was at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, I was positive that something else entirely was putting her on edge. But what exactly was the million dollar question.

When she finally parked the car on the roadside, we were surrounded by thousand of threes in the middle of nowhere.

"Where the fuck are we?"

"Abandoned gas station," she said, pointing a spot behind her with her finger while leaning against the car to check her phone.

"Thank you," I sneered. "Now I know exactly where we are... Who are we supposed to meet, then?"

"I'm sorry, what makes you think I'm going to share any kind of information with you?" She adverted her eyes from her phone to give me a condescending look.

"Damn it Katherine, she's my friend! I have no idea what happened to her. I don't even know how badly she's been injured, and all you're interested in is to play the smartest ass around! I want to know what you know."

"You could've just said please," she deadpanned. I bit back an angry growl and forced a smile on my lips.

"Please."

"Too late."

"Fuck you, Katherine!" I clenched my hands into tight fists to hold back the sudden urge I felt to rip her throat out. This woman was infuriating. "Why do you even care? You don't give a shit about her except when it comes to put her in your bed!"

"So, just to be clear," she interrupted, feigning confusion but her features had turned cold. "You're accusing me to take a wicked pleasure in trying to rescue her, now? Or am I just pretending to rescue her, that part is a tad ambiguous..."

"Why are you doing this? Because you have plans for her that require her to be alive and in your possession? Is that it?" I hissed angrily.

"Or maybe I simply enjoy her company?"

She titled her head to the side and took several steps toward me. I knew Katherine all too well to not recognize the threat underneath her seeming detachment, but I was tired of her little game and the mixed up signals she was sending. Worry or manipulation, I couldn't tell and if she knew something about what happened to Maya, I needed to know.

"I may have believed you liked her in your own twisted way, but the panicked phone call? The rush to save her? Your perfect embodiment of worry? I'm not buying it. You need a heart to care, and we both know you don't have one."

Before I could blink, she dashed and kicked my knee, breaking it efficiently. I had barely time to register that fact that I felt my arm being twisted behind my back and heard it crack three times. Groaning in pain, I fell on one knee before meeting some cold metal violently.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I growled against the car hood.

She flipped me around to slam my back against it and strangled me. I grabbed her hand with my good arm and crushed her wrist, trying to get her to loosen her grip. That was when I noticed she had completely vamped out, and it made me pause.

"It's not the first time...I call you a cold-hearted bitch," I rasped in a strangled voice, her hand squeezing my throat. "What's going on...with you? Why are you acting like that? Your...behavior doesn't make any sense!"

I stared into her fully black eyes and began to worry that she was gone too far for my own safety, but eventually, the veins under her eyes faded and her fangs disappeared, brown replacing black in her troubled gaze.

"Don't you get it?" she husked, an edge to her voice. "I caused this!"

"What?"

Since she had denied it every time I accused her, I was fairly certain she wasn't confessing that she had kidnapped Maya.

"God, you're all such idiots," she snapped, shoving me aside brutally. I fell from the hood to the ground and coughed, rubbing my sore throat to ease the pain. I stifled a cry when I put my kneecap back in place and stood up unsteadily.

"What are you talking about?"

"Use your head for a change, Damon!" she spat. "Did anyone come for Maya before?"

"Not since she's in Mystic Falls anyway," I said after giving it some thoughts.

"Then, what changed?" She turned around to face me for the first time since her outburst and raised a condescending eyebrow.

"We found out about her abilities. And so did you." I lowered my eyelids into slits. "But if this is the reason why you took her, why denying it at first to confess it now?"

She rolled her eyes and made a disdainful face. "I didn't take her. But do you think she would've answered any ofmy questions if I had asked her about what she was?"

"Hell no!"

"Don't be so smug... She didn't tell you either."

I opened my mouth to hurl back a snarky comment but nothing came out. Even though I understood Maya's need to tame her abilities by herself, it still hurt that she had kept them from me. I closed my mouth and pictured a few torturing scenes involving Katherine inside my head, before speaking again.

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm afraid that by asking around, I lured the big bad wolf out," she said in a detached tone, strolling towards an old and rusty pump.

Why was I not surprised that one of us was yet again hurt and in danger because of her?

"Nothing new in the Katherine-centered world. You don't care about the consequences as long as you get what you want."

"Believe it or not Damon, but I wouldn't like seeing her harmed."

She broke eye contact with me and let her fingers wander over the pump. She was putting up a good show of casual indifference, but I wasn't fooled. This was one of the rare moments where she was caught red-handed and felt the slightest bit bad about it.

"Then disappear from her life or she will," I stated seriously. "Oh wait. She already has!"

She shot me a dark side glare as an answer.

"You should leave Mystic Falls and run for the hills. That's what you're best at. It's highly unlike you to risk your own life to save someone else, anyway."

"Who says I'm risking my life?" she asked coldly, raising her chin up in defiance.

"You did. You said whoever kidnapped Maya was supernatural and had to be fast and strong to do so. You also called them a big bad wolf just a minute ago." I flashed her a mocking grin.

"It was a figure of speech," she shot back sternly, "and I never said her captor was faster or stronger than me."

"What if they are?"

"You'll make your entrance, then," she sing-songed, shrugging a shoulder.

My jaw dropped open. "That's why you took me along? So I can be used as a disposable decoy?" I snarled, taking a couple of steps towards her.

"I didn't take you along, Damon. You crashed my little getaway."

"Wait a second... If I hadn't jumped in the car, you were planning on doing this by yourself?"

A sparkle of irritation flashed in her eyes. I just had time to see her purse her lips in displeasure, before she turned her back on me and pretended to inspect the old pump next to her.

"Holy shit," I mumbled in disbelief, as shocked as the first time the thought had occurred to me. "I was wrong... When you said you enjoyed her company, you weren't lying, were you? You actually really like her!"

Suddenly, a loud noise of heavy metal being crushed echoed through the desert gas station. Even though I couldn't see a thing from where I was standing, I was pretty sure the pump had now Katherine's fingerprints engraved on its side. She snapped her head back toward me, her gaze blazing with cold rage.

"Someone really has a death wish, today," she seethed lowly, taking deliberate steps towards me. My first instinct was to move away, but I did my best to appear unfazed by her threatening stance. For the second time of the day though, I was worried that this might be my very last road trip. Her attention drifted away for a second, her eyes jumping toward the road and I followed her gaze. I spotted a tiny black spot coming our way and mentally thanked my lucky star for its perfect timing.

Maya's POV

The sound of a swarm buzzing loudly in my ears brought me back to consciousness, the feeling of my skull being catch in a vice finishing to wake me up. My mouth was dry and tasted like ashes. The smell of blood was overwhelming. I made an effort to open my eyes, but my eyelids were so heavy that it took me several times to succeed. As soon as I caught a bit of light, a dull pain flashed through my head. A silent cry escaped me as the back of my head and my right temple started to throb painfully. What happened? Why was everything hurting so much?
I blinked a few times and squinted, trying to focus on my surroundings. My legs were laying in front of me, my jeans stained with blood. I tensed as the memories of the assault rushed back to my mind. I had been kidnapped. My first instinct was to bend forward to get up, but my shoulders were stopped instantly. Glancing down, I saw a massive metal chain coiled around my chest, and as I tugged at it again, I realized that my wrists were also tied to the sides of the cast iron radiator pressing painfully against my back. The choice of shackles and their size were alarming. Either my kidnapper was new at this and was paranoid enough to overdo the restraining thing, or they knew exactly what I was. A sickening feeling twisted my stomach into knots.

Pulling again and again at the chain as hard as I could only served to tighten the nooses around my wrists. The radiator wasn't moving even a tiny bit. The thing was enormous. Trying to push back the panic invading my entire body, I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to focus on the smartest thing to do. My phone. I shot my eyes open and squirmed to see if I could reach my back pocket, until the memory of it lying on the console as I answered the door flashed through my mind. I was screwed. My heart started beating frantically inside my chest, and it took everything in me not to give into panic again. There had to be a way to get out of this mess.

I forced myself to calm down and gave a hard look around this time, observing everything, every detail.

The room was large, and the walls and hard wood floor reminded me of a country house. From the dust and leaves piling up in the corners, no one had set a foot in there for quite some time. The only light source was coming from a single window blocked by bares, and from the look of it, I wasn't sure I could tear them off the wall barehanded despite the recent increase of my abilities. The only door, on the other hand, looked a lot more easy to take down. It was wobbly, the wood cracked and the hinges rusty, and the huge lock bolting it seemed almost played out. The door was definitely the wiser choice to flee. The only problem was to break free from the heavy chain coiled around me first.

I twisted my neck around and pulled on the restraint to give it a closer look but I couldn't spot a padlock, which meant that the chain was directly fastened to the cast iron monster behind me. I cursed and wriggled to find a nut, a bolt, a pipe- anything- that looked about to give way. When I realized the radiator was in much better shape than the rest of the room, I growled in frustration, causing my splitting headache to flare up and I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent a whine. I closed my eyes to soothe the pain and decided to test the wooden boards of the floor with my heels instead. After a few unsuccessful tries, I felt one of the boards lift a little. The sound of dust falling on the ground followed quick after. I snapped my head around to stare in the direction of the noise behind me. I pushed my heel against the board again and watched its end scratching the wall. Plaster dust fell again. A tiny bubble of hope raised inside my chest. The wall was crumbling. Maybe if I pulled hard enough and long enough on the chain, I could rip the radiator off the wall.
Suddenly, I felt a presence. My heart jumped in my throat and a wave of panic threatened to swallow me again. I looked frantically around for a piece of glass or wood, a screw, anything that could be used as a weapon but came back empty handed. A moving shadow appeared on the floor under the door, and my eyes locked themselves on the door as I watched in horror the handle rotate on its axle.

A/N: Another cliffhanger?! *gasp* I must be evil (please don't hate me)