After reaching the top and extricating himself, he lay there, staring into the darkness, trying to put pieces into place. Spitting out dirt and sucking in musty air, he tried to understand where he was.

He’d crawled from a grave; that much was clear. But he was in some sort of stone tomb, walls thick and muffling any sounds of life from beyond. The door almost imperceivable in the pale light. Only the most delicate hint of brightness appeared around the edge of some square near the top.

A vent? The thought fell into place, giving him definitions and images, but no underlying structure. He knew what it was, the technicality of it, but not any recollection of seeing it before.

His heart beat so slowly he was tempted to crawl back into the earth, wrap it around him like a blanket, and return to sleep. Why was that a comforting thought? Did anyone enjoy being buried alive?

Though he didn’t exactly feel very alive in that moment. More a pain riddled corpse, grasping for anything solid. Was he some sort of zombie? Another word that brought definitions and images to his mind. He hoped he didn’t resemble the shambling, rotting corpses he could recall from movies. And further back, he vaguely recalled something very similar in real life, though much more horrific, yet still familiar.

He sucked in air, the feel of it cooling his throat, clean, but also heavy in his lungs. As if he hadn’t breathed in a long time. Distantly he heard an alarm. Muffled and quiet, it was some sort of beeping. Just annoying enough to make it harder to think. He lay there for a while, trying to put thoughts into place. A thousand faces and memories ran through his mind as sharp as shards of glass, broken, scattered, and missing in some places.

He couldn’t remember even the basics, his name, or the names of any of those faces. Why he’d been buried. Or how he’d been able to crawl free of the grave.

The smell of dirt, cool and earthy, eased a bit of his growing anxiety, but the hint of a scent, wafting through the vent high above, made his stomach growl. It wasn’t even a delicate sound of passing hunger. No, it roared like some ancient monster needing to feed. The growl was followed by a pulse of hunger surging through him so strongly that even his teeth hurt. He touched his lips, wincing as one of his teeth cut the edge of his lower lip. He didn’t bleed, it just throbbed with a dull ache.

Blood. That was what he smelled. What he craved. He groaned at the idea of the thick, hot liquid pouring over his tongue.

Voices approached and he listened hard to try to make out what they were saying. It was an unusual jumble of sound, with heavy accents he couldn’t understand, even while straining to hear them. What he did catch was the smell of blood and the steady beat of at least one pulsing heart. He pushed himself up, ready to crawl toward the door, needing to feed.

It opened before he could do much more than turn his head toward it. Then it closed again, leaving one man inside. This one didn’t have the steady heartbeat, his was slower. Nor did he smell as divine as whomever had been outside.

A lamp turned on, low, but still too bright for his eyes, and he flinched. Yet the man held something that made him crawl forward. The smell so good that he had a visceral need to get there, take it. Drink.

He swallowed hard, throat dry, his thirst begging to be quenched.

The man said something, but he couldn’t understand it at all. He couldn’t feel any fear from the man, more irritation, but the man held out a cup. And that cup was everything he wanted in that moment.

It was hard to hold, his hands—fingers stiff and unyielding—didn’t want to move. The man actually pressed the cup to his lips, tipping it to let the heat slide into his mouth.

It was heaven. Everything narrowed to the liquid fire of that cup. The delicate flavor of chilis and chocolate hidden beneath the copper bite of blood. He couldn’t remember how he knew what any of that was. Only that the warmth of it trickled down his parched throat, slowly awakening nerves, filling his body with growing sensation, and added aches. He hurt all over. Every part of him an echo of pain, as though he’d slept a thousand years and the joints and muscles were being forced to move, stretch, and function.

Then the cup was empty.

He cursed, tipping it, hoping for more. It barely touched the hunger; only began to awaken his senses. Not enough to clarify anything. Or give him much strength at all, though when the man took the cup away, he tried to fight it. But the man was stronger and set the cup aside before sitting down on the stone lip of the crypt beside the light.

It wasn’t so terribly bright anymore, in fact, it didn’t illuminate much about the man. Only that he was young, with dark hair and eyes, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. All items that were boxes checked on a list of things that only partially made sense in his head. Words becoming images or vice versa, without an understanding or memory as to how or where.

He put his head back on the dirt and sucked in air as the heat of the blood trickled through him, a slow drip of living energy. Barely enough to touch each nerve.

“Boss says you’ll need more blood,” the man said. “But since my guy was the closest non-vampire supe, you’ll have to manage on that tiny bit till we get you out of here. I don’t share well outside our ménage.” The man’s words began to make sense, an almost secondary recognition, that the language he was hearing wasn’t his first, but still something that had been learned. “You in there? Boss said it could take a bit to sort through the mess. And you’ve been down a long time. Glad you showed up back here instead of at the house. That could have been bad.” The man sat with his hands in his lap, still enough that if he hadn’t been speaking, he wouldn’t seem to have been moving at all.

“Gabe?”

The name startled him. That too, felt visceral, his. A piece locking into place, his mind grasping it. He was Gabe. Had been Gabe for a very long time. Of that he was certain, though everything else was still a jumble. Almost overwhelming were the memories that rolled with the name. More faces, names, events, snippets of broken bits of his past, emotions dancing with an intensity that almost made him pass out.

Gabe teetered on the edge of darkness for a few minutes. There was too much. Too much everything, but not enough clarification.

“Luca tastes great, right?” The man said. “But it will be your only taste. If anyone else had been closer I wouldn’t have shared. He’s mine.” The last bit was said with a deadly edge. “We get a bit possessive. He likes me getting all caveman. Says it makes me hotter and he loves being thrown on the bed, or against a wall, so I can screw his brains out.” The man trailed off, staring into the distance. A voice crackled into his ear from an… earpiece. Something else Gabe wasn’t sure how he recognized.

“Car is ready. Does he need a box?”

The man stared down at Gabe, expression mostly blank, but he reached up to push a button and said, “No. He’s mostly mobile. How much blood does a vampire need when they come back? I don’t need much.”

“If it’s not from his Focus, he’ll need a lot. And he was down a lot longer than you ever have been.”

“Ronnie is not going to be feeding him any time soon,” the man said.

“No…” the headset crackled a slow response. “We’ll get him to Max. Get him fed and back on his feet. See where his head is before exposing him to the witch.”

“I’m not worried about the witch,” the man said. “Give me a minute to get him moving.”

“Sam, be careful. He’s weak, but that doesn’t mean he’s not lethal.”

The man, Sam, let out a sarcastic laugh. “I’d be thrilled to put him back in the ground.”

“Not forgiven?” The voice crackled through the line. “He might not even remember.”

“Too bad for him then. He’s got a lot of bullshit to make up for. And I still fucking feel our bond. How is that possible when he cut me off?” Now he sounded mad, though he still didn’t move from the ledge.

“Those sorts of bonds are never completely gone. Not until true death. It’s similar to a past lover and how you always remember bits of them, good and bad.”

“Ain’t loving this shit,” Sam said. “Fuck, things were going well. Why now?”

“Some things will always be a mystery.”

Sam stopped chatting with the voice in the earpiece and stared down at Gabe. Gabe sucked in air, his chest aching as the slow beat of his heart steadied, though his hunger was barely eased. He felt more in control, though very disoriented and tired.

“I’m a vampire,” he said, his voice little more than a raspy whisper. Not a zombie, but still undead, tied to the grave and death. The boxes in his head checked as he filled them with what he knew about vampires. The lists were long, but had a lot of holes. More missing pieces.

“I was disappointed, too. It’s not all the phenomenal cosmic power that romance novels lead us to believe,” Sam said. “But here we are.”

Gabe tried to sort through his thoughts to clarify. “I went to ground.”

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “Better late than never, I guess. How much do you remember?”

That was a loaded question. “Too much? And not enough? Nothing fits together.”

Sam let out a long sigh. “You look like shit. All zombie-like. But your eyes aren’t red. They’re black, meaning you need blood, and the revenant is close. If we put you in a car, will you attack anyone who’s not a vampire?”

“I don’t know,” Gabe answered honestly. He felt as if his control was in place, but he knew that the hunger was intense enough to take over. “Maybe not?”

Sam reached for the button again. “Bring the box.”

Box?

“Once I open the door, I’ll need you to get in the box,” Sam instructed. “We will add grave dirt to it.” He waved his hands at the contents of the tomb. “I think you came back here because it’s where your grave dirt is. I know Ronnie added most of it from your apartment after he moved everything out. I’m glad you woke here. Waking up in the witch’s backyard would have meant war, I think. Especially with the kids there…”

Kids? Witch? “Vampires aren’t allowed to touch witches,” Gabe whispered, feeling something tug at his memory. The glimpse of a face, there and gone. Too fast to catch much of it.

Sam laughed. “Yeah? Maybe in the old days. I haven’t seen that in a book anywhere, and Max insisted I memorize that shit. I’ve read them all. Maybe something from your sire?”

The woman’s face popped up in his mind, clear, but with no name. The emotions, however, were potent, as Gabe felt himself lurch upward as if to attack. He stopped himself only inches from grabbing Sam, though Sam hadn’t moved at all. The thought of her made him homicidal. Good to know.

“That’s a trigger, yeah?” Sam asked after a moment.

Gabe cycled through a handful of memories attached to that face. “She was a monster.”

“Who said you couldn’t touch a witch?”

“Yes.”

“Funny. Since you’re married to one.”

Married? Gabe grasped at the thought, again the flicker of a face, but not enough to really see it. “I don’t remember.”

“Ronnie will love that. Play dumb. He might forgive you sooner. Or put you back in the ground.”

“Forgive me. What did I do?” A thousand things echoed through his head all at once. The noise becoming too loud. Too many things. Deaths even. Monstrous acts. He caved in on himself, rolling up into a ball and trembling in the wake of too many memories trying to find a place in his mind.

Before he knew it, he was in a box, the scent of dirt surrounding him, and the lid slid closed as Sam stood over him. “This is seriously bad timing.”

Gabe wanted to ask questions, but the top closed and he felt sleep drag him down. The comfort of the small place, dirt and darkness, letting him chase back some of the scattered memories. He let it all flit away for a while, resting with the memory of a dark-haired stranger who’d been his first kiss.

Curious how clear that was. That moment, though obviously a different place and time. Gabe felt the box moving and the pull of his grave letting him go as he was carried away from it. Even with the dirt in the box, mixed with soil from the grave, he knew the distance meant something. A strain on his control, rising hunger, but total exhaustion.

He tried to follow the memory of the dark-haired man. Older than him, but only by a few years. Gabe sat on the edge of those thoughts, similar to a faint dream, watching the man grow and go off to battle, and finally watching him die.

That ached, similar to a wound to his chest, deep and piercing. Raw. He cringed away from it, trying to relax and ease the feeling, though he was lost in the sensation of dying all over again.