Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries

52. Grave Encounters

As it turned out, Ciara Fletcher's premonition was correct. Once she and Riley arrived back in Mystic Falls, they'd learned that there was an explosion at the Young farm, killing 12 council members, including Pastor Young, once all of the vampires had escaped.

Riley walked into the Grill where she knew that she could find Damon, bypassing the seat that was eternally saved for his dead best friend, Ric.

"I have to ask you something," she said, moving the glass of brown liquid that he was drinking out of his reach.

"Hey!" he protested, clearly already drunk.

"I'm serious," she asserted. "I'm just gonna ask once, and whatever answer you give me, I'll believe you because we don't lie to each other, right?"

She took his shrug and upward eyebrow movement as confirmation.

"Did you blow up the Young Farm after you rescued Stefan and Elena?"

Damon turned to look at her first the first time, through squinted eyes that seemed to ask her if she had completely lost her mind.

"No," he said, point-blank. "I always take credit for killing people."

Riley sighed, with both relief and worry. She was glad that Damon hadn't been responsible for something that had killed somewhat innocent people, but the bigger problem was that they didn't know who was.

"Why do you even care?" Damon asked her suspiciously. "You realize that they tried to kill every vampire in Mystic Falls, right?"

"Yeah, they're... idiots," she said, struggling to think of the right word. "But in their minds, vampires kill whoever they can get their hands on, and they wanted to protect themselves. Not everyone has the time to become best friends with a town's worth of vamps," she reminded him, earning a slight smirk, as Liz Forbes entered the Grill and made a beeline for them.

"Did you hear about-" she started to ask, before Damon cut her off.

"Fletch has already accused me of murdering the Pastor," he told her, looking her in the eye. "I didn't."

"The explosion was sparked from inside. This wasn't an accident," Liz told them, still glaring at Damon suspiciously. A vampire was the only explanation that she could come up with. No one else would have been able to pull off an explosion of that size and still be alive.

"It wasn't Damon," Riley guessed playfully, raising an eyebrow at him, a small smile playing on her lips. "He likes to brag about his murders."

Before either Damon or Liz could respond, a man that they didn't recognize came up to them.

"Excuse me, Sheriff. I was wondering if I could speak to you for a minute about the explosion at the Young Farm?"

When Liz looked confused, he introduced himself as Connor Jordan, an 'independent contractor'.

There was something about him that made both Riley and Damon raise their eyebrows at each other in a silent question, watching Liz walk away with him. It felt like he knew more than he was letting on.

"You have your suspicious face on," Damon commented, reaching for his drink and taking a swig, ignoring his own suspicions.

"I live in Mystic Falls," she reminded him. "This is my normal face. It's similar to my 'hey, someone wants to kill us again' face, and completely different from my 'that person who died is alive again' face."

She was referring to both Tyler and Klaus. From what Caroline had told her, she worked out that Klaus had made Bonnie put his consciousness in Tyler's body, before restoring his own, so both men were alive and back in their rightful bodies and minds.