Just ask Wyatt.
Christian popped the trunk and got out. An owl hooted in the distance, and animals scurried about in the underbrush of the surrounding woods. The smell of moss, decomposing leaves, and wet earth hung heavy in the air. He rubbed his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, squeezing his eyes shut and wishing for a miracle. Keystone was an exceptional group, and he’d had high hopes for a lasting career.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Christian suddenly lurched forward, pain lancing through his chest. Within seconds, his muscles seized from the unmistakable power of impalement wood. A black cloth covered his head before he slid off the trunk and fell onto his back, the wood pushing through the front of his chest.
Someone had managed to creep up on him, but he hadn’t heard the sound of human heartbeats to tip him off. His attacker tightened the cloth on his head by wrapping something around his neck, likely a rope or cord.
Fecking hell!
He listened to their footsteps moving toward the mausoleum up ahead. The door opened, and then a stone slab made a gritty sound as it moved. The person returned and lifted Christian with ease. Whoever it was didn’t seem particularly muscular, but they were certainly strong enough to move swiftly without a single muscle trembling. Unless she was flat chested, he had ruled out a woman.
Christian was immobile but still able to feel himself being placed inside a coffin with the dearly departed lying next to him. He waited for the man to speak but heard nothing.
That unnerved him more than anything. Men had a tendency to make a grand speech before committing murder or an act of revenge. Did he know this guy? God knows Christian had pissed off enough men in his time.
So it left him bemused when they laid him inside a crypt with a skeleton and covered it with the stone lid.
Then the door to the small mausoleum closed.
And a car drove away.
Christian was too stunned to even curse in his head. Whoever this shitebag was, he was a clever one. Christian cleared his mind, waiting for the car’s return. After an hour, the permanence of his entombment became a grim reality.
Trapped in a tomb with Martha Cleavy.
He’d specifically chosen this grave to bury the body in because he thought Martha could use some company. This dried-up husk of a woman had once told Christian that he’d never meet a woman he deserved, that all he was good for was cleaning the horseshit from her boots. That was before he’d become a Vampire, back when he was just a young man trying to earn a few coins to better his life. Martha took pity and hired him to clean the muck and filth off her boots and horse’s hooves. He soon realized that this spinster had an ulterior motive—to seduce him, promising a higher position in her house if he’d only put forth a little “appreciation” for her kindness.
That was what Martha did. She found strapping young men who were destitute—men who were desperate enough to prostitute themselves to a plain woman with a stern face. And from what he’d heard, none of it involved the act of sex. Perhaps it did for some, but he suspected she wanted to avoid the risk of pregnancy or disease. One man told him that Martha had asked him to scrub her bedroom floor in the nude, while another mentioned something about kissing her fanny whenever she walked by him and lifted the front of her skirt. And in Irish speak, a woman’s fanny isn’t her bum. Before anyone in good society would catch on, she’d quickly discard those men like yesterday’s trash.
After he turned her down with an insult that she had a horse’s fanny, Martha did everything in her power to ensure that no one else in the community hired him for any odd jobs. Christian went two weeks without food, eating stale bread that a baker had tossed out for the dogs. That was when he resorted to a life of crime.
Martha said with absolute confidence that he would eventually come to his senses and lie with her, to which Christian replied, “Over my rotting corpse.”
Little had he known it would be hers.
Fecking Martha.
Even her coffin still bore the faint smell of her cheap perfume. If he could move, he would have rolled his eyes in the back of his head.
Viktor wasn’t going to call in a search party. Christian had led him to believe that he might not be returning as a member of Keystone, and Viktor wasn’t the sort of man who would browbeat him into staying. Everyone had the option to leave, but it came at a price. Viktor would just assume that Christian had fled to avoid having his memory scrubbed of everything he knew about Keystone.