Heartlines ▹ Elena Gilbert [1]

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN
AN ABUNDANCE OF PROMISES

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Rowan woke up with a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to come from deep in her bones. Just the thought of moving made her even more exhausted than she already was. It took her a few minutes to come to her senses, for her to remember what had happened before she had passed out. The vervain in the lemonade Damon had given to her in a peace offering, her throat burning, Stefan and Damon going to kill Mason Lockwood because he was trying to expose them all. Her going to find Caroline in order to warn her, and then the guard grabbing her and shoving something into her neck. When she remembered that, she became acutely aware of each movement her body was making. She could feel hard stone beneath her back, could hear multiple people breathing. She didn't know where they were, but she could wager a guess. The park had been near Lockwood property, and there were plenty of underground tombs and cells that were left alone, abandoned.

Rowan knew that there were vampire hunters on the police force, and considering a police officer had been the one to vervain her, she opted to stay as still as possible. She kept her eyes closed, kept her muscles relaxed, kept her breathing even. She didn't want them to know that she was conscious. She wasn't of any use to them if she was still passed out. Hopefully, no one came along to kick her in the stomach simply because of what she was. She would play this up until she knew what was going on, until she knew how many people were in that abandoned place. It allowed her time to come up with a plan.

Every single plan she could think of ended with someone's death, and the thought made her sick. She hadn't killed anyone so far. Katherine had been the one to kill Kendra White, and she had stopped herself from killing the human woman who had found Kendra's body. She had almost killed her own mother just that previous night. Rowan wanted to keep her record clean for as long as she possibly could, but the more she heard the policemen talking in hushed voices, the more she felt like that wasn't going to be a possibility. Even if she did manage to get out of her situation without killing anyone, they would all still know who and what she was. If she didn't kill them, then Damon probably would.

She resisted the urge to gulp. Even that small movement could give her away, and she didn't want to be on the receiving end of their hatred for vampires any more than she already was.

She eventually focused her mind enough to listen to something other than the amount of people breathing. She could hear someone pacing back and forth, could hear them fiddling nervously with something in their hands. With a sense of dread, she realized that it was probably a gun. She resisted the urge to gulp again and let herself hear what the person was saying.

"No." It took everything inside of Rowan not to go tense at the sound of Liz Forbe's voice. She had known that Liz knew about vampires, had known that she was the leader of their so-called vampire hunting group, but for some reason none of it had actually seemed real and possible until that moment. Never in a million years would she have thought that Liz Forbes, who used to drive Rowan to school back when carpooling was a thing, would have ordered them to bring Rowan in to be killed.