By the timeEdie returned from her frantic supply run, Max’s fingers had begun to twitch. Setting down her armful, she dropped to his side and laid her hand gently over his, but he didn’t open his eyes or respond to his name. After a minute or two, he began mumbling indecipherably. A woman’s name—Jackie? Jacquelyn?—and something about…Yanni?
Maybe Max harbored surprisingly intense feelings about New Age music?
Edie couldn’t quite make out everything, but his increasing agitation was clear. His spasms of movement were becoming more violent, his words more guttural. A snarl of rage twisted his features one moment, followed by a flinch of unspeakable agony.
Whether that pain primarily came from his unsettled dreams or his battered and torn body, she couldn’t have said. But his flailing was exacerbating his injuries, so once she got the gash in his neck clean and bound, calming him became her top priority.
She wasn’t strong enough to restrain him, so she’d have to take a different tack.
He didn’t have many unmarred stretches of skin, but she found them. Stroked them, murmuring words of comfort. And slowly, bit by bit, his distress and tension waned. His jerky movements stilled once she began gently carding through his hair. When she traced his cheekbones, his disturbed muttering subsided into an occasional murmur, and he turned his face into her open hand, nuzzling her palm.
Eventually he calmed for good, and she could address his other lacerations.
He didn’t stay unconscious much longer. Which relieved at least some of her anxiety, because she hadn’t been certain when or if he’d wake up again. It was a real shame for him, though, since she was still wrestling him out of his remaining clothing, cleaning blood from his too-pale skin, and bandaging his open wounds, and the whole process must hurt like fuck.
As he returned to his unfortunate senses, he was lying prostrate on a gorgeously thick, silky rug of rapidly depreciatingvalue, wearing nothing but his boxer briefs. After her desperate search for necessary supplies, she’d filled a decorative bronze bowl with warm water and was gently soaking and sweeping away the crusted blood from his spine with the softest hand towel she could find. The red-tinted runoff soaked into the priceless textile beneath them, and she was trying her best not to notice the ever-spreading stains.
Unable to find bandages of sufficient size in his first aid kit, she’d ripped up some of his designer shirts to bind his wounds. Tearing apart fancy shit had been oddly satisfying, she had to admit. Even though her fingers shook with dread the entire time.
His hand flexed, then reached tentatively toward his neck and encountered multiple blood-soaked strips of very smooth cotton holding that whole region of his body together.
“Is that…” He paused, and his voice was a little stronger when he started again. “Did you use my micro-striped Trecapi cotton button-down as a bandage?”
She couldn’t see his frown, but she could hear it. “Hard to say.”
“Why…” His muscles jumped under her light touch as she moved to a fresh patch of carnage on his shoulder. “Why is it hard to say? Either you irreparably ravaged my favorite shirt or you didn’t, human.”
“Trecapi.Trecapi.” She tested the unfamiliar word on her tongue, hoping it would chase away the metallic taste of fear. Tried rolling therand failed utterly. “Does that involve orange juice somehow?”
His head turned slightly, the movement drawing a groan from deep in his chest. “What the…hells are you talking about?”
“Wait.” The current clump of dried blood was particularlystubborn, so she dipped the hand towel back into the bowl and tried again. “I was probably thinking of Tropicana. Sorry.”
Could they do this forever? Maybe if they bantered long enough, he’d never remember the crucial issue at hand. Literally, right beneath her hand.
Where she’d just spotted teeth marks.
He actually snorted. “Edie. You’re killing me.”
With that ill-chosen turn of phrase, his fingers curled into a fist, his shoulder turned to granite beneath her fingertips, and any hint of levity between them disappeared.
She sniffled, loudly.
He waited, and they both knew what for.
“Tell me,” he said after a moment. “Now.”
Not a suggestion, but a firm imperative. And he had the right to know. She understood that. It was just…
Her hand stilled, and she bowed her head. “I haven’t had time to look everywhere, but…there are scratches here. Where I’m touching you. They don’t look like claw marks.”
“Teeth?”
“Maybe.” Almost definitely. “The skin isn’t broken, Max, so let’s not assume—”
“I’m a vampire. The wound could have partially healed already.”
The stake rested on the gleaming wood of the library floor, right next to the rug where he lay. Within easy reach. One blurred movement, and he had it gripped tightly in his hand.
