The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [72]
“I’ll get bandages,” Harper muttered, and headed for the door to the adjoining bathroom.
Drina nodded absently, but her attention was on Tiny. Despite knowing what was going to happen, the violence and suddenness of it all appeared to have caught him by surprise. He instinctively tried to pull away when Mirabeau pressed the wound to his mouth, but caught himself almost at once and allowed her to do it. Still, he choked a bit as the blood coursed into his mouth, no doubt unable to subdue his natural repulsion at the thought of drinking anyone’s blood.
“You have to swallow. Try to relax,” Drina said quietly. Tiny met her gaze over Mirabeau’s arm. Seeing the distress in his eyes, Drina instinctively slid into his mind to help, soothing his thoughts and making his body relax, so that he could swallow as much of the blood as possible before the nanos made the bleeding stop.
Inside his head as she was, Drina knew when the gushing began to slow. It quickly reduced to a trickle, and when it stopped altogether, she released her control of him.
Tiny immediately removed his mouth from Mirabeau’s arm and sank back on the mattress.
“Are you all right?” Mirabeau asked with concern, hardly seeming to notice that Harper had returned with bandaging and was tending to her wound. “Tiny?”
Nodding, he raised his head and forced a smile. “I’m fine. You?”
His gaze slid to her wrist, but there was nothing to see now that Harper had bandaged it. Still, he grimaced at the swath of white and then sighed and asked, “How long does it usually take to start?”
“It differs for different people,” Harper murmured, setting the roll of cotton bandaging on the bedside table. “With some it starts right away, and with others it takes a while before they notice a difference, and then it’s sometimes just a slow onset that builds up.”
“How do you feel?” Mirabeau asked worriedly.
Tiny smiled wryly as he took in the circle of concerned faces around him. But shrugged. “Fine. I don’t feel any different. I guess I’m going to be one of those slow-buildup kinda guys. I—” He paused, eyes suddenly widening, and then began to convulse on the bed.
Chapter Eleven
“Chains,” Harper barked, as Tiny went into convulsions, and the room was suddenly a hive of activity as the group broke off into pairs. Leonora and Alessandro threw themselves at Tiny’s right leg, Edward and Dawn took his left one, Mirabeau and Anders went for the right arm, and Harper hurried around the bed to join Drina at Tiny’s left arm as Teddy and Stephanie tried to squeeze their way up between the others surrounding the bed to help.
Even with two immortals to a limb, it was a struggle to get Tiny chained down. His body was thrashing wildly, jerking his limbs about. It wasn’t until Teddy gave up trying to help hold one of Tiny’s legs to implement an alternate plan that they made any headway.
Harper saw the old mortal straighten and move around the people crowded around the bed. Even so, he wasn’t at all prepared for the sight of the man suddenly grabbing up Stephanie, and pretty much tossing her on top of Tiny’s chest. He then quickly climbed onto the bed, and dropped to sit on Tiny right next to her. The two hung on for dear life as the mountain of a man bucked and thrashed beneath them, managing to stay put and weigh him down, easing his movements long enough for the others to get the chains in place.
The moment Harper managed to get the wrist he and Drina were struggling with locked up, she reached around and grabbed up the bag of drugs she’d let drop. She quickly prepared a shot and jabbed it into Tiny’s arm, pushing the plunger home. Still, it took a moment after that before Tiny’s struggles eased.
“Well,” Teddy sighed, mopping his brow as he climbed off of Tiny. Tucking the hankie in his pocket,