I raised a hand in his direction. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Please go right ahead. Don’t let me interrupt.” Good.
“Here.” I pushed the bottle at Quinn. “Drink this.”
He moved his face in the opposite direction and pushed at me weakly.
I frowned and poked him in the shoulder. “Do you want to die?”
“Yes.” It was more of a moan than a word.
When I was a little girl, my family had a Labrador retriever. I’d named him Princess. I don’t think he’d ever gotten over the unfortunate name, being a relatively macho dog, but what can I say? Little girls call things pretty names. Anyhow, Princess got sick once, and we had to give him three pills a day to cure the infection. We tried to trick him by hiding the pills in his food or wrapping them in cheese. But Princess would have nothing to do with that. He knew. After trying time and time again to get him to take the pills in a pleasant manner, my mother finally did what she had to do. After all, it was for his own good.
I thought I’d try a variation with Quinn. I pinched his nose shut.
“Hey!” he protested and batted my hand away.
He was weak. I could handle him. I glanced over at the doorway. Thierry looked almost amused by my actions. I gave him a dirty look. Then I climbed onto the sofa—pulling my skirt up high enough to be able to maneuver properly—and straddled Quinn’s chest to trap his arms under my knees.
“What are you doing?” The pain in his voice wasn’t hiding his surprise very well.
“Treating you like the bad dog you are,” I said, and then pinched his nose shut.
I put the bottle of diluted blood against his lips and held on. He thrashed around a bit, but I had him pinned pretty good. In fact, after a moment I almost felt as if I should be charging our audience for the show. It had been a lot different with Princess. My father pried his mouth open and my mother pitched the pill to the back of his throat. Nice and easy. Not like “Rodeo Quinn at the Midnight Eclipse.” Hey, that sounded like it could be a porno movie.
Finally Quinn opened his mouth to breathe and he choked against the water, but not before I managed to get quite a bit down his throat. I smiled at the small victory and lost my concentration for a split second. His left arm came loose from under me and he sat up. I lost my balance and slid backward off the sofa, my legs flailing in the air. He had the water bottle in his hand now. I thought he was going to throw it away, but he tipped it back and finished drinking it down.
I straightened out my borrowed black skirt and slowly got to my feet.
“See?” I informed the onlookers. “Exactly like I’d planned it.”
Thierry came fully into the room. “How long has he gone?”
“What?”
“When was he turned?”
“Um, it was this afternoon when he was attacked. Just before I got here.”
Thierry nodded. “I see.”
“You see what?”
Quinn threw the empty water bottle away as if he’d just realized he was licking a spider.
“Disgusting monsters,” he snarled as he got to his feet. “I want no part of your evil world.”
I tried to smile. “Good to see that you’re back to normal. Why don’t you sit down and rest for a minute?”
“I need to find my father.” He made for the door, but Thierry stepped into his path. “Out of my way, vampire.”
“Yes, I thought I’d recognized you. You’re one of the hunters. I saw you from afar the other night.”
“That’s where I suggest you stay. Far away from me. Now let me out of here.” Thierry crossed his arms but didn’t budge. “So you can inform your friends of where we are? I don’t think so. Besides, I doubt that you’d get very far in your condition.”
“My condition?” Quinn frowned. “I feel fine now.”
“More than eight hours with no intervention? We shall see.” Thierry stepped aside.
Quinn blinked, uncertain about what to do, then managed to compose himself. He walked confidently as far as the door and then screamed and hunched over while he clutched at the door frame.
I made a move to go to his side, but Thierry put his arm out to stop me.
Quinn clawed at his stomach as he slid down to the floor. “No,” he managed. “Not again.”
“What’s going on?” I asked Thierry. “I gave him the blood already.”
Thierry just stood there in front of me. He turned, with the barest motion of his head, to George and Zelda. They turned and left, closing the door behind them.
I grabbed his sleeve to force him to look at me. “Come on. Tell me what’s happening.”
He sighed and extracted his sleeve from my fist. “He has gone at least eight hours. A mild blood cocktail will not rouse him out of this.” I felt confused by what he was saying, and then I remembered. At his townhome… he’d said something about vampire toxins. Like a poison in your bloodstream that needed to be counteracted by the blood of your sire as soon as possible, or—Death . A horrible, pain-filled death that could take hours. My bottles of newbie special couldn’t compete with that.
I felt panic clutch at my chest as I watched Quinn suffer. “What can we do?”
“We do nothing, Sarah. He is a vampire hunter. He kills our kind without a moment of mercy. Do you really wish to help him?”
My entire body was clenched as tightly as my fists. “I can’t just stand here and watch him die.”
“Then leave.”
“Thierry, please. Do something. What does he need?”
“He needs the blood of a strong vampire. A lot of it.”
I looked at Quinn, then back at him. “Your blood.”
He didn’t answer.
“Thierry. Please help Quinn.”
“He doesn’t deserve your misplaced compassion.”
I didn’t have a response to that. Or did I? Quinn was one of the bad guys. I got that. But I’d seen something in him before—something that wasn’t so bad. He didn’t like what he did. What he was. If not for his father’s tight grasp on his life, I wondered if he’d even be a hunter at all.
“I know,” I finally said. “I know all of that. But please help him, anyhow.”