Page 34 of Vampire so Virtuous

Nantes, France, 1747.

“Tu ne m’as pas entendu t’appeler, mon chou?”

Of course he had heard her calling. How could he not, with the hearing he now possessed? He could hear everything.

Antoine sat stiffly in the small room she’d given him, staring at the wall.

“Tu devrais venir quand on t’appelle.”

No. Antoine was beyond obeying. What could she do to him that she hadn’t already? He refused to move.

“Oh, un peu de rébellion? Amusant.”

She surged forward before he could react. Even with his enhanced vampiric abilities, she was still more powerful, stronger and faster than he ever imagined. Her hand gripped his hair, dragging him behind her through the château.

Back down to the basement, where it had all begun.

He tried to ignore the discomfort of his hair being pulled, the humiliation of scrambling for footing as she dragged him down the stairs.

She flung open the door.

The cage lay as he had left it weeks before, the iron bars torn out. She couldn’t put him in there, so how did she expect to restrain him?

She threw him into the corner of the room so forcefully that he flew through the air, crashing into the wall. A jolt of pain shot through his arm, a blow to the head stunning him.

In the few seconds it took him to recover, Belle had lifted a flagstone from the floor. She pried up a second while he watched.

“Et maintenant, tu m’as fait salir mes vêtements,” she said, blaming him for the dirt on her clothing.

But Antoine didn’t care. There was nothing she could do to make him obey. Not anymore.

A third flagstone, set against the wall. She gestured at the earthen floor she’d uncovered. “Creuse.”

Dig? That was an unusual punishment. Dull and pointless. He turned onto his side to stare into the corner, ignoring her. Refusing to cooperate.

It was the only weapon he had remaining.

She cursed under her breath, then, to his surprise, did the work herself. Her hands pushed into the earth, again and again, until a pile collected on the floor of the basement around her.

If she had objected to the dirt before, it was nothing compared to the state of her now.

The hole was almost large enough to stand in when she finally stopped. What did she have buried down there that was so important?

She climbed out, gesturing to the hole. “Viens voir.”

Curious, he did lean up, peering over the edge. But it was too deep to see the bottom, and he was determined to hold on to his resistance. He slumped back down again.

Once more, her hand closed in his hair, and she dragged him to the hole, scraping his skin painfully over the coarse edge as she thrust him in. There was nothing down there. Nothing but packed earth, hard and old, compressed by the weight of stone for decades.

Belle replaced one of the three flagstones she’d removed, but it wasn’t until she reached for the second that he finally understood what she intended.

“Non!”he cried, reaching for the edges of the hole to pull himself out.

But she was ready for it and still too fast for him.

A blow to the head stunned him, and he slumped back into the grave she’d dug. She set the second flagstone down while he was still reeling from the blow. He tried to resist as she dropped the third, but again she merely cuffed him away, pressing it firmly in place above him.

The hole was cramped and dark, with hardly enough room to crouch. Butdid she really think this would hold him? Was she going to sit above him for the duration of his punishment? That hardly seemed her style.