cheesetalia

[cw: violence, kidnapping, intended human sacrifice]

ao3 link for ppl that prefer to read there.

If Matthew were a more rude boy (like his brother) he might have rolled his eyes when he opened them to see the figures shambling in a circle around him.

He was—yep, he was tied up. He could see by the full moon shining overhead that they were in a grove of woods a little ways down from an old crumbling cemetery.

This was so cliche. When was the last time he'd been through this? The 70's? Why did it always happen to him? Alfred, despite having way more cults within his borders, never got abducted by a bunch of idiots wanting to play human sacrifice.

Matthew wriggled, rubbing his wrists against the ropes lashed tightly around them. No give, they'd been done up well. Expertise in knots and ropework probably gained by the cultist in some shoddy sex club or a parade of sleazy hookups.

Either way, he wasn't getting out of them. He sighed, resigning himself to the sharp blade through his heart, the knife slashed across his jugular, maybe his head smashed in with a sledgehammer if he'd been taken by a more creative bunch this time.

They’d buried him. It was understandable. How were the villagers to know the stranger passing through their town would come back to life? If they had known, they might have did worse. Might have burned Matthew or torn his body to shreds, thinking he was some unholy creature. But even being burnt to a crisp didn't keep his kind from reanimating.

He could understand why they’d buried him, but it didn’t make it any easier when he reanimated into the darkness and took a gasping breath, only to have nothing to fill his lungs with. Only the blanket his body had been wrapped in kept him from sucking in dirt.

Matthew pushed down the rising panic. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in this position, though it had been decades since he'd been so unlucky. Normally he’d come back to life before the traditional sitting time was up, but when one of his kind died in a land not their own, it took them longer to revive.

And Matthew was never very strong. Alfred could bounce back from a death quickly even when he was thousands of miles away from American soil. But Matthew wasn’t so lucky. He’d died on Alfred’s land this time, and he’d been thrown deep into the ground before being covered. Probably to keep animals from getting at the body.

Choking back a sob, he flexed his fingers and began to move.