Blanket of Fear

“What the fuck was all that about?” Matt hissed at Zack angrily when they reached the cabin a few hours later, shoving the dark-haired man back roughly before Joel stepped in between them, intervening because he knew they’d fight if it went any further than that.

Zack just sighed and pushed his hand back through his hair. “We couldn’t risk saying anything in front of Val, Matt. She’s turned, and she’s dangerous.”

Matt blinked, unsure of what his friend was telling him. He didn’t know whether to laugh because such a thought was ridiculous, or punch his friend for saying something so untrue about the blonde woman. He settled for letting out a low-pitched growl before he tried to make another lunge at Zacky, though he was once again interceded.

“You don’t fucking know what you’re talking about,” Matt said, shaking his head, absolutely horrified by what Zack had just told him. He looked from Zack to Joel, and finally to Eliza before his eyes darkened angrily. Jacoby saw the way that the larger vampire was looking at her and moved in front of the redhead, blocking her from being attacked.

“She has something to do with this, doesn’t she? Val’s been saying that Eliza’s been trying to do something and I told her it wasn’t true. But I guess it is,” he shook his head before glaring around Jacoby at Eliza. “Why don’t you fucking just come clean? You’re ruining someone’s fucking life!”

“This has nothing to do with Eliza. At least, not in the way that you think it does,” Zack cleared his throat, not changing his stance about his girlfriend. “Val has attacked her once already. We have proof that she’s working with Castro.

Matt’s eyes widened, not believing a word of what Zack was telling him. Before he could say anything, Joel spoke as well, giving the hazel-eyed man something to think about and keep his mind occupied for a few more minutes.

“You wouldn’t have chosen Avenged Sevenfold over Val if you didn’t know that there was something off, Matt. So don’t give some bullshit excuse now,” he muttered, pushing his hand back through his hair before he turned to look at Eliza. “And how do you think she feels about all this? Val was one of her best friends when they came here, and now they’re enemies. What do you think that says? One of them has changed, and it’s not Eliza.”

It was all too much for Matt to handle for right now, and it bothered her. He paced for several minutes before he just turned and walked out of the room. He was confused and angry all at the same time, and he knew that he needed to think about what he was going to do carefully before he did something stupid.

He sighed as he walked away from the small cabin that was in the middle of the Canadian woods. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew that right now, he needed to leave and get some time to himself. He kept walking until his feet hurt, and then sat down on a rock, giving himself some time to think for the time being.

He knew that Eliza would never do anything to hurt Zack, or any of the rest of the members of Avenged Sevenfold. He hadn’t trusted her when she’d first joined them, and he’d been more than a little wary about her reasons for staying when she’d had a few opportunities to try and escape. He’d thought that Castro had wormed someone into their ranks to take them out from the inside, but he’d been wrong. It was blatantly obvious to him now that Eliza loved Zack, perhaps more than she had ever loved someone before in her entire life. She would never do anything to hurt him, so that left him with the other option that Joel, Zack, and Jacoby had given him.

If Eliza wasn’t the traitor, it meant that Val really was. He couldn’t believe that she’d turn traitor like her sister had, but then again, on the same note, it was easy for him to believe. Avenged Sevenfold had taken a lot away from the blonde woman, and he knew that she had to resent it, at least on some level. They had taken her and her sister away from their parents, not even letting them go to their funerals when they’d died. They had taken Michelle away from her, in a way, because of Eliza. And then they’d taken the thought of a family away from her. It pained Matt more to think of that particular reason than the others. He knew only too well how much Val wanted to have a family with him.

He had known that she was pregnant, but she’d promised that she was going to get an abortion. When she continued stalling until it was no longer legal to get one because of how far along she was, she’d thought she’d gotten away with it, but he’d told her that they needed to look at a good adoption agency because they couldn’t keep it. In his own way, Matt was looking out for his future child.

This was no world to bring a child into. He knew that Nicole and Joel had their kids, and that Jacoby and his wife had theirs as well, but those kids hadn’t been raised in an environment where violence was the norm and you always had to be constantly on alert for traitors from the inside. Matt didn’t want to raise his child to be paranoid, and that was exactly what would happen if it stuck around Avenged Sevenfold.

He also knew that Val was also extremely bitter about what had happened with Michelle. Of everything that they’d taken away from her, they had allowed her to keep her twin with her almost constantly. And then her sister had gone rogue, and was now dead. Matt didn’t know how he’d deal in a situation like that, but he definitely knew he wouldn’t be happy if he was in Val’s place.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, knowing that this was not something that was going to be resolved in a day or two. He needed to seriously think about what he and the rest of the guys were doing, though he already knew that he would never turn his back on Avenged Sevenfold. When push came to shove, the guys had been there for much longer than Val had been.

He sighed and pushed his hand back through his hair as he stood up so that he could start making his way back to the cabin. He knew that Jacoby was right. He had made his decision when he’d left Val at that border and snuck here to be with Avenged Sevenfold, leaving her alone with the drugs and the charges. Even if he wanted her back, there was no way it had happened. He’d turned his shoulder to her.

He sighed and realized that everything was changing slowly. Avenged Sevenfold would need to seriously rethink how they did things after everything with Castro was cleared up. They had Bat Country, and they knew it was a huge territory that people were interested in taking control over. After this was all swept under the rug and handled, they’d need to find a new way of conducting business.

He also knew that they’d probably need to come up with a new plan for the way they ran the country and its affairs as well. They’d made a lot of enemies over the years for refusing to even think about a new way to think about doing things—Castro was just one of many, and if things didn’t change, there’d be a lot more Castros where he had come from. It was something that he didn’t want to think about. He wanted things to go back to the way they had been two years ago; when things were simple and easy and it had been the norm to treat people they didn’t like, like shit.

But even though he missed that, he knew things had changed. They wouldn’t be able to get away with that now, and it was all because they’d never thought of a new way to do things. If they all made it out of this alive, they were going to have to come up with a new plan. They’d find a new place to live, somewhere in Bat Country, and then they’d start to rebuild everything that was now in shambles.