The lid of the coffin closed and Aidan heard the hard sound of shells of soil that were falling on the wooden surface above his face.

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

They really buried him!

Buried him like Suren. Were going to seal him in. Within the cool moisture of the ground and he could smell a mixture of old tissue that rose from the inlay of his prison and the intense smell of freshly broken chunks of earth.

Aidan suddenly felt panic rising. Like this it must be when a mortal was buried alive by accident! Closed in, hearing the earth covering the wooden box in which he was sealed in helpless. To know that he was going to die slowly when the air went off, the lungs start to fight for oxygen and he was to suffocate slowly. How much time would it need until suffocation? It was an agonizing death.

How long would he resist? How long would his immortal body withstand death? Withstand the narrowness of the box, withstand the panic and withstand before he went crazy? With enough time he would go from madness to stupor when resignation was to follow.

Between the muffled sounds of falling earth he heard the voices of the Elders who stood beside the open grave. Voices from far above. None did discuss the decision of Mother nor heard he any further comment by her.

I will probably die if this lasts long enough but you will have to live with the inevitable knowledge that it had been you who killed the only one who ever loved you. Who loved you so much that she failed to become the hard and soulless offspring you so dearly wanted. It is you who failed! Failed to regard your daughter as that what she was to become.

He had not failed to pay respect to his son.

You have become a man to be proud of he had currently told to Henry.

The memory of him hanging on that damn hook like meat in a slaughter house, the view into his tormented face, nearly constricted his throat and let a roar rising that echoed in the narrow box. If I ever will get out of this prison the traitorous bastards who did that to him will pay for...whether Henry will be alive or not.

They all will pay the price.

Suren had paid for what she had done to Henry. Not out of his hands, but by those of her mother. I beg, he would have had the chance to seek revenge one day for the suffering she sent him through. Her cruelness was equal to that of Mother but by the lack of hardness that finally broke her neck.

Tigers care for their kids but they kill the weak ones. Mother. She had killed the weak one to proof her hardness and ruthlessness. Mother had born her mortal child, had gifted her with life, than with immortality to rise her as her equal. She had lived throughout the centuries to see her growing up in every way, then falter and finally fall. There had been hope and hope dies last even with the not flawless and Suren had her patience until finally she grew tired of even her own flesh and blood.

Could she ever really love?

No.

The smell grew stronger when the last shovels of earth had fallen on the coffin and the thud of a shovel on the surface of the grave indicated that they were flattening the ground above.

Let grow grass over it.

Aidan speculated if they would place a gravestone on it like it had been done with Suren´s grave were she was buried eight decades. Not buried to kill her but to broke her very willing. Vampires won´t die by burials but their mind would grow weak and become shapeable...

He didn´t want to lose his very willing.

The last sounds faded away. The silence grew and there were no further sounds when the voices and the bodies belonging to them disappeared. A silence so strong he began to feel deaf. Never before had he experienced such silence.

Silence.

Silence can drive you mad.

Was this one of the principles to break his will? Unbearable silence until you start to talk to yourself in the urge to hear anything and your mind is going to split, open to anyone to insinuate their will to him.

His hands and his wrists start to hurt, then grew numb and became pins and needles, when he tried to move them within his shackles. Aidan let out a moan when prickling changed into hurt. This would be the worst thing that they had tied him with his hands on the back and he had no space to turn around himself inside his prison. How should he stand that any time? Even within the short time since they had sealed him in it became nearly unbearable. What did that mean to long time periods or would his hands grow numb, then necrotize and finally drop away like parts of a shrunken mummy?

Suren had been like a shrunken mummy when he had brought her into the cellar under the Halloway Hotel, were willing donors waited for the vampires to be grated with an unusual sexual experience in exchange.

Who would bring him in when they finally decided to free him from his underground prison?

Aidan closed his eyes and the silence went into his narrow prison like the pits of hell. Once he had thought about if down in the ground he would at least hear the whispering sounds of all these little creeping creatures that made the soil their home by nature.

Moisture crept with slowly cold fingers into his limbs, exchanged the burning tingle with cold numbness. His slowing breath was lying over his face like a foggy sheet. His mind went back to his son he had so gone to lengths for not too long ago.

The cellar became empty when the members of the self instructed penal lead by Mother left the sticky dust filled hall. Distinct smell of dried blood and a light touch of slowly rotting flesh filled Henry´s nostrils. Blood that wasn´t his own and the smell mixed with that which emanated from his own body.

His chin was sunken onto his chest and his body tried to shut off from the excruciating pain that was permanently running through his body from back to sternum. By luck the hook had missed his wind-pipe so he could breath at least. And had been able to splutter an nearly inaudible excuse when Aidan found him hanging and all the well intended plans had failed when the guardians had caught him.

He had come into the cellar after he had bound the red scarf around a nearby tree trunk to lure Aidan the right way. Mother had her slumbering place, her hide away here in this abandoned house out in the woods.

He had his doubts when Aidan told him what in details he was going to do.

Aidan was angry, shocked and disgusted when Mother simply staked her daughter like a turn out badly puppy. One step more to force the decision on him that it became time to finally get rid of her and therefore all of them set free from her royal suppression. She had reigned since centuries, he didn´t know exactly for how long, since he lived since 257 years. But what he had seen for almost more than a century it turned out now to be enough of royal hardness, brutality and contempt.

With her none of them would ever be free the way he wanted.

Not only vampire politics but a kind of suppression that went deep down to the base of their souls. The last years she became a nightmare.

He and Henry, they wanted so much to be free of all of it. Henry had taken up the leadership over the orphans when they´d asked him for. And he, Aidan had betrayed their trust into Henry when Suren had forced the decision on him whether for them or for Henry.

That had been unfair!

He had never hold any resentment against them, those who simply wanted to be free from all political suppression, same like him. Free from politics, any intrigues and the treachery of some of the members of the Council.

Maybe it had all be in the plans of Suren, initiated by her Mother, to demonstrate him by this way what the Royals thought about all those vampires who dared to step out of the line. And he was definitely stepping outside when he tried to life as a vegetarian. Drinking from the blood bank, from the bag, not taking his fill in the blood damp atmosphere of Halloway Hotel where control slipped away so easily when he was drinking.

He was somewhat far away from the controls Henry maintained so well when he took his fill while having sex with willing donors.

What if they had cut away him from his sources to turn his mind? When not the hospital itself grew suspicious about the loss of transfusion material and installed enforced security for the blood bank? Who in the clinic was connected to the Vampire Council? He couldn´t remind any. But that doesn´t matter anymore.

If all grow worse he was going to drive mad and die anyway.

He´s weak and he´s suffering and he´ll die anyway

The words sprang to his mind when he had once turned Henry and had urged him to drink to complete the changes in his body.

He would become as weak as Suren when only his imprisonment would last long enough. And Henry, his Henry, wouldn´t be able to come to his help. He himself needed to be set free.

Aidan swallowed hard, choked, when his throat went suddenly dry like sand in a desert.

Was it sheer panic or a more physical lack of liquid? He tried to distract himself from his thoughts and more to concentrate on the possible sounds within the soil.

But there were none.

Silence was so strong and thick like walls of rock even when he was buried under shells of soil and not solid rock like a Pharaoh in a pyramid. He listened to the slow beats of his immortal heart and with each beat he knew what the word eternity really tended to mean.

Claustrophobia.

The word sprang to his mind with the cynicism of the medical educated man. Henry was once a medic. Friendly, caring, always seeking to do the best for his patients. Even under the nearly impossible conditions in a military field hospital. Took even his time to sit beside his bed and read a book for him aloud when he had been to weak to do for himself.

For heaven´s sake Aidan didn´t tend to fall prey to claustrophobia.

Claustrophobia didn´t become a problem for Henry when Mother came back into the cellar after the burial. He had lot of space around him.

She was followed by her guardians and some of the Council members. He heard her approaching and suddenly her steps stopped dead beside him. The pain in his chest nearly knocked him unconscious every few seconds and he barely could lift his head now, when his tearing eyes saw the tips of her shoes.

"Uh, Henry Durham! Tilt his head down in front of his queen…", she spat. "Like it belongs to a servant! Or don´t you dare to look into my eyes ´cause of your traitorous behavior?"

He felt her hand, her nails, dig into his chin and lifting his head so far, he could look into her eyes what needed only a little movement because of his position.

When his eyesight cleared a little bit Henry saw strong contempt in her look. He was drifting on the edge of consciousness and any little movement let rise new pain in his whole body. It was different but in the other way equal in intensity to that he had suffered during and after skinning. He fought for breath and hissed with pain, when his head moved and the pierced muscles tore in his chest. A thick clot of blood stuck on his sternum and his face was swollen with bruises, his bottom lip split where a fist had hit..

Mother stared into his face and a smile crept into her face when she puckered her lips in a fake of pity.

"You´re thirsty my friend, aren´t you?! Uh, you will be so much more…" Her arm rose and indicated those who were hanging around him like empty shells of a human being. Some dead, some dying and the less making any sound anymore. Henry couldn´t turn his head to follow her hand but he could smell the dried corpses, the distinct smell of decay: blood and bodies.

Any time later he would be going to join them.

How could she stand the stench of death around her when she went to sleep. Compromising her own lair. He estimated her to maybe enjoy it instead of loathing it.

The perfume of her victory.

Ending up like this now he had suffered by the hands of her daughter Suren for nothing else but to be alive for what Mother hold in back for him. Once he had thought that as a vampire he would take matters in his own hands when it comes to dying or that time would kill him.

He let out a deep moan.

Mother turned over to the body that was hanging next to him, stretched her hand to one of the guardians and he put a knife into her hand. She grinned, and with a fast movement she slit open the man from chin to groin. The victim cried out loud when blood shot in a gush to the ground, more black and thicker than normal, looking more like black jelly.

"What a waste of substance! But he isn´t worth it!"

Like by magic there was a wooden stake in her hand and she drove it into the vampire´s heart. With shock Henry saw him dissolve into glittering ashes and end up in a pile of grey dust on the ground beneath the now empty hook.

Then she turned back to him.

"A royal should show mercy!" Her smile was cold as ice.

Her hand rose and with the bloody tip of the stake she caressed his temple with the softness of a lover. Her face was within spitting distance, but his mouth was dried out. She seemed to know this like everything in general she seemed to know, especially when it came to torture.

But she had been Suren´s mother. She had taught her very daughter the techniques of torture long before any of them went to life.

"But you, my friend…", her voice dripped with a mixture of pity and contempt when she accentuated the word friend; "…won´t die so fast! I will let you live as long as I won´t grow tired of your pitiable sight. All your cleverness and your treachery together with Aidan won´t pay off!"

"I will…die be…before you`ll…ha…a…ve time…to enjoy me…as…your exhibit!" , Henry choked under his breath interrupted by waves of pain that fired through his chest.

"Uh, you will be pretty wrong!" She turned around to Atlee, the Amish guy with the golden red hair.

"I order you to feed him with small amounts of blood, enough to keep him alive as long as I will endure him for my personal satisfaction! I won´t get loose my precious number one enjoyment. So be aware with what you´ll feed him: Enough to keep him alive but not such an amount to heal or strengthen him! You´re responsible for it at all points!"

Atlee nodded respectfully.

When Mother turned away from Henry and was followed by her subordinates, left him hanging for eternity like she promised, Atlee faked a few things he seemingly had still to do in the cellar to arrange her will.

The door fell shut behind them and Atlee was alone with the victims of Mothers vengeance or royal penalty.

Henry´s head was sunken on his chest and his eyes closed with excruciating pain. He could smell and hear the other…living…vampire, heard him stepping through the straw that was spread out under the victims.

His steps came nearer.

A hand touched his temple carefully and went deeper until it reached his chin, cupped it.

"Can you hear me, Henry?" His breath stroked over Henry´s face when Atlee had risen his own head a little bit so he could look into Henry´s painful eyes.

Henry saw his condition as a reflection in Atlee´s face when the other´s face contorted with grief. Atlee always had been a well minded under the vampires, far away from the brutality of the Amish who preferred the so called old way. A brutality so opposite to the rules of the Amish known in general.

"Henry! You hear me?", he tried again.

A moan was what he got as an answer.

"Okay! Listen, Henry… I´ll do what mother ordered to obey her will. Feed you with blood to keep you alive…"

"Be…better…stake me! Ca…can´t stand…an…more!" Henry whispered with last strength. His eyes fell shut and he let out a row of moans, now that they were alone. Without anybody to listen and…enjoy it.

"Stake me!...Please!" Henry choked. The please so tortured it shot a hot flame through Atlee´s immortal heart. His eyes bled black when he fixed the Amish. His plea so urgently, so weak.

"Please, Henry! Don´t beg me for this! You have to live! For Aidan! He didn´t save your life from that offspring Suren to have you die now!" , he argued. His voice low enough that no one outside could hear them.

"They…gonna…kill me!" Atlee understood he meant earlier or later. Mother hadn´t to be mistaken in her will. She would kill him in future time. Any point she would determine. She had made him her prey, her toy.

Like she had made all of them her toys.

Time to finally finish this!

"…kill me…" Henry repeated in a hushed and bleakly voice.

"No! I won´t!" Atlee sounded determined. "I´ll feed you with blood, but with more than she means. Enough to keep you alive and slowly heal you…enough to enable you to free Aidan! I´ll help you both! Aidan is not a friend of mine but I respect him and I for myself am finally tired of what the leaders are doing to the vampires all over the time."

He looked over the crumbled hanging body and couldn´t do a thing to soften Henry´s torment like placing a stool under his feet because that would be visible. He couldn´t simply free him from the hook. Not before Henry would have got such an amount of blood that he could be brought out from here. An escape would only be possible in one step, after a preparation that took time. Atlee could guess very well what he was going to expose Henry to.

"You have to be very strong, Henry…I´m so sorry! You have to cling to your very life with your very will! Don´t even dare to give up!"

"You…can…I…not know." Henry uttered senseless words. He moaned and his whole body seemed to tremble, initiated by inner spasms. His eyes closed with a half choked cry when a wave of pain rolled over him.

Atlee knew that Henry´s body was short before going into shock state and he couldn´t do a thing to prevent it.

I don´t want to lose you…oh dear God!, he thought.

Henry´s fists clenched and his whole body began to shake like in shivering fits. He fought for breath and Atlee closed his arms around his helpless figure, trying to stabilize him in his agony.

"I will bring you blood…will bring you blood, Henry! Hold on! This will end soon and I´ll get you free for heaven´s sake!"

After a while the trembling softened then stopped and Henry´s body went limb when he closed his eyes and drifted into unconsciousness. Atlee let out a harsh breath and let loose the body in his arms. He lent back and stroked his hair away from his forehead. It was sweaty.

Atlee looked around the cellar, his hearing so much better like that of humans. No one was within hearing or the less visual range. He shot a view to Henry, found him still unconscious and carefully he opened the remains of the ruined shirt, peeled them back and bared the skin where the hook poked out of the sternum.

The view itself was kind of agonizing.

So much reminding of a half cut cattle in a slaughterhouse.

Blood soaked out of the large sized wound which wasn´t going to close because of the immense loss of blood Henry had suffered. It ran down in thin rivulets and drained away in his jeans.

You will be glad for every second you stay unconscious, my friend…, he thought. Don´t dare to think about what it had been the moment that damn hook went through your back and chest…

A cold shiver shook Atlee down to the inner core. He swallowed hard, turned away and left the cellar to get some blood.

When he arrived at the blood depot, stored in a large size fridge, an all aware guardian sat beside. Mother had made her preventions that all but nothing else as she had ordered would be done.

He would have to look for outer sources to complete his own plans for Henry.

And for Aidan.

If Aidan would have to stay grounded for a longer time, what meant at least a week, relating to Aidan´s feeding habits, he would need additional blood for a first feed of Aidan.

With a stone cold face he took out a bag of blood and left the small chamber. The guardian shot him a view then leaned back in his chair.

Atlee went back to the cellar, slipped into the dusty air of the cellar. To call it a prison will fit better, he thought when he arrived beside Henry´s limb body.

"Henry! You awake? C´mon…Essenszeit…" He dared to touch Henry´s temple again, waited for n reaction. It took half an eternity until Henry let out a moan. His lids opened, small slits over black pools and his mouth opened.

He could smell the blood and his body cringed with desire and despair inducing a new wave of pain. He so urgently needed the blood but the pain nearly tilted again his weak consciousness. Atlee placed himself beside Henry, cupped his chin with one hand and shoved the small tube of the bag between his lips.

"Drink, Henry…please…", he urged.

Henry´s eyes widened with fear.

"Gua…guard. When…come. In." Henry choked and his face contorted with pain. Every movement set free a hell of pain.

"Der is a dudd, awwer ar dud nischt…"Atlee commented in his Amish dialect with a smile. He was certain Henry did not understand the sentence but that doesn´t matter. The guard in front of the cellar was the smallest problem.

"Don´t be afraid! He is a mortal. No problem for me if he makes trouble. Now: Drink, Henry…!" he explained to him.

Henry begun to suck up the thick liquid and the taste of the blood threatened to overwhelm him. The bag was empty in a few moments as fast as the slim tube could deliver.

"Okay, I´ll get you more. Anyway! Don´t worry…" Atlee promised.

"Hu…hung…ry. Gim…" Henry choked and a coughing fit started a new wave of unbearable pain in his chest when the few words were forced out of his dry throat.

Atlee stood beside him helpless.

The fact that Henry once was tied up when they caught him like a mouse in a trap was changed now, not for his benefit, into loose hanging arms that clung to his side. His captors knew all too well that he was too weak to move his hands nor his arms, neither to do anything nor to free himself. It simply was an intensifying of torment, demonstrating him his absolute helplessness up to the final point.

When Suren had been an experienced tormentor, her mother had been her grim teacher.

"Hun…GRY!" His arms were swinging in a helpless attempt to fix for his throat and his chest but the only result was that his whole body began to swing back and forth. He cried out and Atlee rushed to his side, caught his body and tried to stabilize him.

"Ssschh…don´t do that! Be quite, Henry…calm down…I got you…be calm…Oh my dear God!"

Calmez toi! Calmez toi…, he had once tried to calm down the fearful upset French soldier in the makeshift military field hospital back in France in 1918 when he meant to verify Aidan for the monster he really became a day later. The next day, during sunrise, when he came into Aidan´s compartment with an improved wooden stake, made from a chair, trying to stake Le vampire, le Monstre.

Henry had taken him for a soldier whose fever and feverish nightmares had driven him mad. Never believed in vampires as real creatures, the less that they could live and move during daylight. But he had been so bitterly wrong. Not so the poor soldier. That damn stake went right into his belly, when Henry had tried to wrung it out of the man´s hands. Aidan had risen from the field bed, his hands clinging to the stake and his terrible wound, cupping the blood like by a pot.

Drinking!

I won´t let you die, Henry…, Aidan had whispered into his ear that was banging with the beats of his struggling heart that fought to pump the blood through his deadly wounded body.

Aidan had saved him.

Had changed him into the very being he was now.

Aidan.

He had smelled the soil from the grave onto Atlee, the fine dust of earth that even heavy and moist clay gave away when you dig it up. Grave! They had…buried him! Buried like Suren eighty years ago! He knew the smell of that clay with the slight touch of decay underneath.

"Ai…dan!" he cried out.

A hand was laid onto his sore lips and Atlee hold him tight. The smell of blood was harsh in his nostrils and he could practically smell the pain in Henry.

His body gave off all that intense smell of blood, sweat, hunger, adrenalin and…

…strongest of all: pure fear.

"Ssschh! Shut up Henry! Don´t give them the satisfaction of having you crying here for your dear friend!" he whispered in a hushed voice. "I promised you that I`ll help you both!" His hand stroked the ruined temple of that miserable vampire who from all of them, deserved such a fate to the fewest.

He knew Henry very well, knew that he had led the orphan vampires and was a faithful son and companion to Aidan. He had risked his life when he faked the attack onto Aidan, accompanied by two other vampires who should assist him in the assault. They had not been to be trusted to. Aidan had stabbed him into the belly to testify that Henry said the truth when he came back that night and claimed the attack failing.

Everybody in the large hall had seen his bleeding wound. Mother too.

Aidan would do everything to save his son. Same with Henry when it comes to Aidan.

Henrys lips moved and Atlee listened carefully. His voice nearly inaudible. His words more a whiff of a voice, so weak.

"What? What´s up?"

"Thirst! Gi…gimme…water!", Henry pressed out.

"Wasser? Nur Narre dringe Wasser wo´scht da Wijn isch…" Atlee smiled. "Aber seis dro…."*(*Water? Only fools drink water when there´s wine…But so be it) He looked for a pot, found none inside the cellar and went off to bring in one, filled with water. To fake the fact that it was for the captive he nibbled from it himself.

The guard looked somewhat suspicious.

"Guarding my special captive makes thirsty!" he claimed with a grin.

"You´re right…"mumbled the human and sank back.

The devil knows what he is doing in there, he thought. But that´s none of my business…

"Kinner un Narre saaget de Waahret…*"(* Children and fools are telling the truth), Atlee grumbled and walked inside again. He hoped that the water would tilt at least a little of Henry´s despair.

He was quite sure that he would have to go forward as fast as possible. For Henry. And for his own mental health.

tbc