Burial Rites - John Stoker, Robin

John wakes up to the all too familiar smell of turned earth and fresh-cut pine. He groans, rolling over. He’s going to have to make a batch of biscuits again to get the dream-scent out of his nose…
And then his nose collides with something hard, wooden, and very much real.
John startles, fully awake now, patting his hands along the thing he’s run into, and wincing when a splinter digs into his palm. There’s nothing that splintery near his bed. Or, for that matter, in Rowan house, if he’d slept over, which he doesn’t remember doing.
In fact, he doesn’t remember much of anything. The last thing he can clearly see is himself bending down over the drained body in the alley while Kira and Robin scouted the perimeter. Then…nothing.
He takes a shaky breath. He feels a little dizzy, and his head is beginning to pound persistently, so he’d guess he was drugged. But…what’s worse is that he thinks he knows where he is.
The splintery pine extends around him on all sides, and when he experimentally thumps a fist against it, the sound is deadened as if there’s something thick and heavy on top of him.
He’s been buried.
He can feel his heartbeat thudding in his ears, and he’s breathing, albeit raspy and shakily, and a bit too fast now.
He hasn’t been turned.
It’s a relief, but it doesn’t solve his immediate problem. He’s still buried somewhere, underground, in a coffin. He has no idea where he is, although when he looks at his watch by its dimly glowing dial it’s been about two hours since he found the body. He does a cursory check, but he can already tell his phone is gone, and there’s nothing else useful left on him. The watch seems like a cruel joke, really. The ticking is loud in the tiny space, counting down the seconds he has left.
He begins mentally plotting a radius, thinking of the cemeteries and parks that would be close enough for the vampire to do this. If he was planning on turning that victim he might have had the grave already dug, which would give him a longer radius. But if he was, why bother taking me? Why not just rip my throat out and do what he started out to?
John is beginning to think this is personal.
Still, personal means preparation. Thus, the pine box and the grave had probably been ready. Meaning that increases the search area quite a bit.
If his guesstimate is right, there’s five parks and three cemeteries in the area. A lot to search even if the agency spreads out extra manpower. The odds of him being found in time…are not in his favor.
But there’s one thing he can think of to try.
Robin can connect to things made from wood. John wonders how strong that connection is. If the kid will be able to sense his presence in this pine box six feet under.
He has to hope so.
He presses his hand to the side of the box and closes his eyes.
Come on, kid, I need your help. I sure hope this works.
All he can do now is breathe, and hope he can keep breathing long enough for his family to find him.
The air in the coffin quickly becomes warm and stale. It reminds him of hiding under the blankets on hot Texas nights with a flashlight and a book. Except in here there’s nothing to read and no light but the dim face of his watch, reminding him that he’s running out of time.
He can’t panic, he can’t. He’ll use up the air faster.
But this is his worst nightmare come to life.
His stomach churns with fear, and he focuses on single breaths. In, out. In, out. Cold sweat collects on his forehead and in his palms. He feels oddly chilled despite the heat in the tiny box.
He has to keep breathing. As long as he can.
It feels like forever before the ground shakes with hurried footsteps. John drags in another struggling breath. The air is so heavy. It’s pressing down on his chest like there’s nothing between him and all that dirt. He’s being crushed.
By the time they dig him out, it might be too late.
And then there’s a rending creak, the wood around him buckles and heaves, and he hears something that he honestly can’t describe other than something like rushing water but raspy. The next second, the cover of the coffin seems to fly aside, with another cracking roar, and daylight streams down, along with a rush of fresh air that makes him cough uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, he’s alive, I got him.” Robin’s voice is equal parts relieved and panicked, and then the kid is sliding down the heap of dirt toward John, reaching for his hand to help him up. “It’s okay, I got you.” John wonders how panicked he must look for Robin to be that dramatically reassuring.
John struggles to his feet, then glances at the massive tree now lying on the ground nearby. It’s a pine, completely different from the small ornamentals scattered around what he can see, in the rising daylight, is a large cemetery.
It hits him in a flash, how Robin got him out so fast, what that sound was.
And that’s about the time Robin goes completely limp against him.
He put everything he had into that. That tree is massive and it must have taken all the magic he could get. Usually he has to be touching the thing itself, too.
John staggers back, catching Robin and lowering them both back into the hole. There’s no way he can drag Robin out of here, he’s feeling pretty shaky himself. And Robin probably called for backup, given what he said right before he scrambled down.
John brushes the kid’s hair off his forehead, glancing at the trickle of red-gold blood coming from his nose and running down his lips.
“Awww, kiddo.” He cradles Robin against him and looks up at the sky, hearing the thud of more footsteps against the grass. “You did good. You did so good.” Robin curls into him a little more, and John holds him close, listening to their heartbeats fall into a matching rhythm.