Allegiance(2)

“I can’t breathe.” The overwhelming fear that had haunted him since his arrest kicked into hyperventilation territory. “I’m going to pass out. Take off the hood. Please.”

Rough hands took his shoulders and pushed him forward until his toes bumped the bottom stair. “Keep moving. I don’t give a shit if you ride to your final destination conscious or unconscious. Either climb out or we’ll carry you out.”

Weakened from hunger and with his hands cuffed behind him, Matthias took the stairs slowly in order to keep his balance. Once he’d calmed, he realized he could breathe. In fact, he could see the area around his feet, and some light permeated his hood, which had probably begun its life as a pillowcase.

At the top of the stairs, the air-conditioned cool of the kitchen stroked his body, offering such relief he wanted to cry. It also made him more aware of the sweat that coated him under the once-white silk shirt that now stuck to his chest like cheap gray paper, and of the grime and stench of three months spent in the same clothes.

The air-conditioned relief lasted less than a minute. He might not have been able to see his surroundings, but Matthias knew this house well. This estate outside Fredericksburg, Virginia, had been his favorite among the half-dozen properties he held around the world—properties that, ironically, would be inherited by his ingrate of a son as soon as he died. He hoped William would choke with guilt every time he spent as much as a penny of the money he’d rejected for most of his life.

Stoneface and Ugly guided him out the west entrance of the house, through the door nearest the basement cell. Matthias could still visualize it perfectly. Once he’d stumbled off the step and regained his balance on the smooth pavement, he gasped rich lungfuls of fresh air that smelled of recently mown grass. The hint of coolness told him autumn would soon end the humidity of another long Southern summer. This one had seemed longer than most.

“Stop here.” Ugly’s hand remained on Matthias’s shoulder, but Stoneface stepped away. A jangle of keys preceded the unmistakable click of a car trunk being unlocked.

By God, enough was enough. If they thought he’d go quietly into the dark again—into a coffin on wheels—they had the wrong vampire.

“Fuck. You.” Matthias twisted away from Ugly and aimed his head in the solid mass of muscle somewhere to the north of Stoneface’s feet—all he could see—and butted him with the rage he’d kept bottled up for months. Stoneface fell with a grunt and Matthias propelled himself on top, scraping the man’s cheek open with his fangs—the only weapon at his disposal.

He spat out the blood. “Fuck you if you think you’ll lock me in there. Grow some balls and just kill me here.”

A sharp, sudden pain in his upper back riveted his attention away long enough for Stoneface to shove him aside and Ugly to jerk him to his feet. Ugly had stabbed him, the sonofabitch. During the scuffle the pillowcase had come off Matthias’s head, and he swayed, the floodlights of the driveway blinding him for a few seconds before dulling to gray as if they shone through a filmy screen.

He scarcely had time to think “silver blade” before one of his tormenters shoved him from the side; he had no option but to roll into the trunk. He’d barely jerked his feet inside before the trunk lid slammed shut and he was again in darkness.

The next couple of hours, or maybe it was three or four, passed in a series of jolts as the vehicle—a rough-riding sedan—bounced his head against a wheel well and sent a dull, throbbing ache skittering through his nerve endings. Rolling to his side helped the pain from the stab wound, but it put his nose in closer proximity to the reek of old oil and the car’s rubber tires rolling on asphalt that was still warm from the day’s sun.

Matthias had drifted into a dull-witted stupor—the state in which he’d spent most of his waking hours, the last three months—when the vehicle jolted to a stop. It sent him rolling face first, a rug burn from the industrial-grade carpet scraping his right cheek.

Before he could roll onto his back and put his legs up in anticipation of taking a healthy kick at his tormenters, the trunk lid popped open. He had a brief view of a clear black sky dotted with stars before Big and Ugly leaned in, stuck meaty hands under his armpits, and dragged him out of the vehicle.

Matthias looked around him at the black mounds of starlit hillsides. “Where are we?” It was too mountainous for Penton, but it had that same earthy smell of pine and moldering leaves.

“Where you end your life,” Stoneface said, and Matthias was pleased to see that the results of his fang work, the man’s bloody new trench of skin and tissue, had yet to heal. “Or start a new one.”